At Enterprise Connect, Cisco will unveil its vision for agentic AI collaboration, along with new AI-powered collaboration solutions designed to create futureproofed experiences for customers, employees and IT teams. New agentic AI innovations include the general availability of the Webex AI Agent for enhanced customer experience. Cisco AI Assistant for Webex Contact Center has new features planned for Q2 2025, including suggested responses and real-time transcription for agents. Workflow Automation in Cisco AI Assistant for Webex intends to streamline processes and save time by working across enterprise apps. AI Capabilities in Webex Control Hub: The platform will allow IT admins to easily access, search and manage all AI ecosystems in one place, and to customize them to match their organization’s needs. Additional solutions announced across Collaboration Devices and the Webex Suite include new workflows in AI Assistant for Webex Suite to streamline employee experiences, Webex Calling Customer Assist, and AirPlay on Cisco Devices for Microsoft Teams Rooms.
DoorDash partners with Klarna to allow users to pay for groceries, takeout, and retail essentials, in full, pay in 4, or deferred payments
Klarna announced its new integration partnership with DoorDash, saying it offers DoorDash customers in the U.S. flexibility and convenience when paying for delivery of restaurant food, groceries and retail goods. In the coming months (it didn’t specify when), DoorDash.com and DoorDash app users will have access to three payment options: “Pay in Full,” “Pay in 4” and “Pay Later.” As it implies, Pay in Full means the customer pays the total amount of their purchases immediately through Klarna’s payment system. Pay in 4 divides the total cost into four equal and interest-free installments. The Pay Later option enables customers to defer their payments as their personal finances will allow. By offering smarter, more flexible payment solutions for groceries, takeout, and retail essentials, we’re making convenience even more accessible for millions of Americans,” Klarna Chief Commercial Officer David Sykes said. The new BNPL integration can be used to pay for the expanding array of products available through DoorDash, including electronics, home improvement supplies and beauty products. Consumers can also use Klarna’s payment solutions for their DashPass Annual Plan, which offers benefits like free delivery and exclusive deals.
Afterpay launches its own commerce media network based on signals and audience data from 350M transactions, to help brands reach young shoppers
Afterpay’s move into advertising is leveraging its younger user base. Saket Mehta, Afterpay’s VP of global advertising, partnerships and revenue, said Gen Z and millennials are using Afterpay to engage with brands and manage their spending. “So leveraging commerce media, the signals that we have, the audiences that are coming, and really shaping the way that the next generation is going to pay and work with financial companies is critical,” Mehta told. Afterpay launched its own media network, powered by Yahoo DSP, to help advertisers reach shoppers across the web and in-store, in September. The network has connected 240,000 Australian merchants to 6.9 million customers, generating $13.4 billion in sales across both online and offline channels. Yahoo DSP’s director of commercial and platforms Andrew Gilbert said a common misconception is that commerce media and retail media are the same. “When we talk about commerce media we’re talking about multiple merchants at one time and when we’re talking about retail media we’re talking about one singular retailer,” he said. Brands can deliver personalised ads, track sales, measure campaign performance and gain insights about their customers. Mehta said Afterpay is able to create “rich audience profiles” based on their purchases and “target” them with relevant messaging. “Leveraging all of that information, both online and offline, we’re able to create really rich audience profiles based on the signals we’re seeing,” he said. “It creates a more customised experience between the customer and the merchant, ideally driving stronger engagement and conversion rates with the brand.” Gilbert said there has been a significant amount of interest from media agencies. Afterpay has already ran a number of successful campaigns focussed on electronics, fashion, travel, entertainment and retail. One CTV campaign with a major retailer led to a 35% increase in basket size, a 2.3% rise in category share, and attracted 327,000 new customers to the brand. Mehta said commerce media provides advertisers and agencies valuable insights about peoples’ shopping habits. “The fact that we have 350 million transactions allows us to create a new offering which allows them to connect across multiple verticals, not just one. “Those nuggets are incredibly valuable to an advertiser and agency as they think about furthering their customer personas.” Gilbert said transaction level data is the future of identifiers. “This will allow marketers, retailers and brands to go after different segments because they actually understand who their consumer is, what they’re doing and where they are,” he said.
Klarna nabs Walmart away from Affirm and boosts its IPO prospects
On the heels of its IPO filing, Klarna announced on Monday that it will exclusively provide buy now, pay later loans for Walmart. The partnership with Walmart is one that rival Affirm had previously owned. Klarna will provide the loans to Walmart customers through OnePay, a fintech startup in which it owns a majority stake and is also backed by Ribbit Capital. Klarna will take over providing the loans “later this year.” Affirm’s stock took a hit on the news, down 8% by early afternoon on Monday, trading at just over $46. The two companies have been rivals for years, although Affirm is more focused on the United States. It went public in 2021 and recently announced that it has achieved $80 million in GAAP net income. Klarna, after suffering a massive blow to its valuation, has made a comeback of sorts and reported a net profit of $21 million in 2024, a huge swing from a loss in 2023 of -$244 million. Landing Walmart as a partner will no doubt only increase Klarna’s presence in the U.S. The retailer is the world’s largest by revenue — reporting $441.8 billion in the U.S. alone last year.
Multiply Mortgage’s AI native origination platform embeds directly into corporate benefits portals and offers employees discounted mortgage rates by analyzing alternative financial data and personalized guidance
Multiply Mortgage, a US-based fintech offering mortgage services through employee benefit programmes, has raised $23.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Californian VC Kleiner Perkins. Multiply also confirms that its services are now available to employers across 45 US states, as well as the District of Columbia. These services enable employees to access discounted mortgage rates of up to 0.75% alongside personalised purchasing guidance, available through Multiply’s AI-native mortgage origination platform. “Homeownership has become increasingly out of reach for many Americans, and we don’t expect interest rates to fall to the levels we saw in 2020 ever again,” comments Multiply co-founder and CEO Michael White. White initially founded the Denver-based start-up with A* general partner Gautam Gupta in 2022, to help employees of private tech companies access equity compensation.
zavvie offers AI-driven cash offers for home sales in 1 hour by automating underwriting and risk assessment; adoption has surged 155% YoY
zavvie, an iBuyer and fintech company, has launched an AI-powered platform, HomeFAI, that is designed to accelerate the speed of cash offers and funding for homebuyers. The new system is described as an upgrade to zavvie’s portal for cash buyers and boosts its Cash Buy Before Sell program, giving homeowners added financial flexibility to purchase their next home before selling their current one. The HomeFAI system promises to streamline home financing, with AI-driven cash offers processed in as little as one hour. Conversions are also likely to be stronger under the system, with zavvie’s Cash Advantage program achieving a 92% mortgage attachment rate. zavvie said that HomeFAI adoption has surged 155% year over year, with 83% of loan officers switching to the new app that’s available in all 50 states. Lane Hornung, co-founder and CEO of zavvie, said. “Our new platform brings unprecedented speed and certainty to home financing, helping loan officers and their clients win more deals. With AI automating underwriting, risk assessment and transaction management, we’re making cash offers and alternative financing solutions more accessible than ever.”
Metro Bank integrates agentic AI to reshape lending, slashing task times by up to 80% to support 71% YoY growth in loan originations
Metro Bank has launched a partnership with Covecta, an AI platform for financial services. The collaboration will deploy Covecta’s third-party agentic AI solution across Metro’s corporate and commercial credit businesses. That solution, the British lender said in a news release, will carry tasks across the loan life cycle “from lead acquisition to servicing,” helping shrink what might otherwise take hours of manual effort into minutes. Metro Bank and Covecta found that each completed task showed a 60-80% reduction in time, thus improving team efficiency, decision making and risk analysis. Andy Veares, managing director of Metro’s corporate and commercial operations, said the AI capabilities will help that side of the business grow at a time when the bank is seeing a jump in new loan originations, which were up 71% last year. “This AI solution frees up more time for our corporate and commercial banking experts to spend servicing our customers, which goes to the heart of our relationship banking ethos,” he said.
EarnIn makes new Early Pay work by getting the ACH file and switching it over to the faster rails so that the customer can get it wherever they bank up to two days early
Early access to paychecks is popular with some consumers, but it’s an amenity that only a few banks offer. Fintech EarnIn is looking to fill that gap while also securing new customers. The direct-to-consumer earned wage access provider launched Early Pay, a product that allows consumers to tap their paychecks up to two days early. Customers are not required to change their existing banking relationships, but they do need a debit card. Instead, customers are required to switch their direct deposit flow to Evolve Bank & Trust – EarnIn’s sponsor bank partner which also provides its Tip Yourself savings product. The money is then rerouted to their existing bank accounts. Customers pay EarnIn $2.99 for the two-day advance on their paychecks. “With Early Pay, what we do is we get the ACH file and we essentially switch it over to the faster rails so that the customer can get it wherever they bank up to two days early,” Ram Palaniappan, CEO and founder of EarnIn, told . “It’s basically the [Federal Reserve] saying they’re going to send this money on the post on date,” he said. “Once we have that notification … then we initiate a push-to-card transaction.” The transaction is an instant credit with a deferred settlement, meaning that EarnIn doesn’t have to put up any capital to offer the service. All of the card rails, including Visa, Mastercard, Interlink, Maestro and Star are supported, Palaniappan said. Despite the fact that the product is designed to entice consumers who bank at financial institutions that don’t offer early paycheck access, Palaniappan does not see Early Pay as competing with banks. “If a bank already offers it to that particular customer and it works for them already, they don’t need to get the service from us, [but] with some of the larger banks, it’s not available to every customer, and through this, every customer can get it,” he said. EarnIn is also looking to fill a hole left by smaller banks and credit unions that haven’t yet advanced their tech stacks to offer a similar service. And because the deposit is rerouted back to the customer’s financial institution, the banks aren’t losing deposit inflows. “You do have solutions that are similar, but they require you to sort of port your entire banking over to a new institution,” Palaniappan said. “You might have an auto loan, you might have a mortgage, you might have reasons why you don’t want to switch your banking over. That doesn’t mean that you can’t get your paycheck two days early.”
Nationwide has gone live on FICO’s cloud-hosted solution integrating external data providers and enhancing affordability assessments and income verification for more accurate credit decisions
Nationwide Building Society has teamed up with US-based analytics firm FICO to enhance its credit risk and decision-making capabilities. Nationwide has gone live on FICO’s cloud-hosted solution to upgrade its decisioning across current accounts, mortgages, credit cards, and personal loans. According to the US vendor, Nationwide’s transition to the FICO Platform was “driven by the need to mitigate the conduct risk associated with an outdated legacy technology stack, to centralise decision-making and align with the corporate strategy to transition to cloud-based services”. Since going live with the platform, Nationwide, which processes around 1.5 million credit decisions monthly and is currently the UK’s third-largest mortgage provider, has reported a “50% reduction in the time required to update scorecards, decision trees, and other decision components”, states FICO. Furthermore, FICO claims its platform has enabled Nationwide to implement instant credit limit adjustments while improving the accuracy of affordability assessments and income verification through integration with external data providers. The partnership, which has so far seen the successful migration of five products, has plans to integrate overdrafts and credit line increases throughout 2025, further advancing Nationwide’s broader digital transformation initiatives.
CallMiner’s new targeted conversational intelligence solution combines unsolicited and solicited feedback, triggering AI-driven outreach based on interaction characteristics
CallMiner, a conversation intelligence provider, has launched CallMiner Outreach, an AI-powered customer feedback management solution. This tool enables businesses to connect with customers more effectively, fostering stronger relationships and uncovering actionable insights. It triggers outreach based on specific interaction characteristics, combining unsolicited feedback with solicited feedback for more targeted surveys and engagement initiatives. By analyzing phone calls, social media, online reviews, and emails, CallMiner Outreach allows CX and contact center leaders to personalize outreach to address specific customer issues, ensuring relevance, timeliness, and improved customer outcomes. With CallMiner Outreach, both CX and contact center leaders can seamlessly integrate customer feedback with the industry’s leading conversation intelligence platform: For CX, it delivers a holistic understanding of the customer, streamlines feedback loops, and improves key engagement metrics, such as net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction (CSAT), to drive retention and loyalty. For contact centers, it enhances the connection between operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, improving key metrics such as average handle time (AHT) and first contact resolution (FCR), as well as agent performance and productivity.