Channels

Yodlee announced its subsidiary Yodlee Credit, LLC has completed the steps necessary to operate as a Consumer Reporting Agency (CRA) under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). By partnering with Yodlee Credit, lenders can incorporate alternative consumer data, such as consumer cashflow data, into their credit models to responsibly expand access to credit. Yodlee Credit allows financial institutions to confidently integrate cashflow data into credit underwriting and consumer evaluation. By leveraging Yodlee’s data aggregation capabilities, the subsidiary unlocks insights that reduce blind spots in risk assessment and expand credit access to more consumers. Yodlee Credit allows financial institutions to confidently integrate cashflow data into credit underwriting and consumer evaluation. By leveraging Yodlee’s data aggregation capabilities, the subsidiary unlocks insights that reduce blind spots in risk assessment and expand credit access to more consumers.

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QueryFuel, a content generation platform powered by Generative AI technology, is introducing its revolutionary “interview-to-content” engine that allows brands to be referenced in AI-generated search results.  Brands that do not appear in these artificial intelligence-themed overviews essentially do not exist in the search marketplace. QueryFuel addresses this issue by creating articles that convert a brand’s knowledge into structured, AI-ready articles that will be referenced as authoritative by Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. The proprietary workflow of QueryFuel removes the typical constraints of content creation by taking users through a simple three-step process: Choose a Keyword – Users enter a keyword, or topic, and the tool facilitates a brief guided interview to ensure they remember their insights if none are captured for maximum citation. AI Transformation – QueryFuel’s engine distills ideas from the interview and enriches them with statistics and examples and then formats the text with H1s, H2s, bullet points, and visuals for maximum visibility in searches. Publish Anywhere – Articles are exported, online or offline, to WordPress, Webflow, Shopify or Google Docs in a single click, mitigating the friction between creating and publishing. In the matter of minutes, QueryFuel can take a human perspective and machine precision to deliver streamlined and AI and SEO-friendly content, which means no more blank pages and no more wasted hours.

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Quad/Graphics is rolling out natural language prompting capabilities for its proprietary Audience Builder platform. The new feature, powered by Snowflake’s Cortex AI platform, accelerates Quad’s ability to create sophisticated audience segments using simple conversational commands instead of complex queries. The AI chat prompt more easily unlocks Quad’s data stack of billions of household data points, speeding the time for Quad to build highly relevant audiences while eliminating the need for technical expertise to create or fine tune results. The natural-language feature uses Cortex AI functionality from Snowflake, a leading cloud data platform, to interpret prompts, analyze stored audience attributes, and enrich results with external demographic data. George Forge, Senior Vice President of Client Technology & Product Development, Quad. “By tapping Snowflake’s AI expertise for natural language prompts, we’re introducing a new level of innovation to our audience targeting process. In the increasingly complex world of marketing, we’re making it even easier, faster and more precise to gather insights, build audiences, and help our clients make meaningful connections with their customers, wherever they may be.” Quad developed Audience Builder to help its clients reach more relevant audiences by identifying consumers who are more likely to engage with advertiser messaging and to break through walled gardens by providing greater transparency about who the advertisers actually reach. Quad’s Audience Builder allows media strategists, analysts and planners to uncover deeper consumer insights and design higher-performing audience profiles that can be deployed across channels to improve marketing mix measurement and incrementality. Intuitive, natural language, AI chat prompting accelerates and streamlines the creation of sophisticated audience segments from Quad’s data stack through basic, conversational prompts, such as, “Build an audience of competitive bike riders in South Carolina.”

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Mastercard has unveiled a new digital media network designed to deliver personalized advertising across its owned channels and other channels. The new Mastercard Commerce Media will use insights from permissioned data to deliver personalized offers and content to consumers, and it will use proprietary card-linking technology to attribute conversion and incrementality for advertisers. Advertisers can use this digital media network to deliver tailored offers and content like cashback, discounts, incentives and advertising. Mastercard will use permissioned data about past purchase behavior and real purchase signals to identify the right audience for each offer. Because consumers who receive the offers will be able to activate them on their enrolled card, Mastercard will then be able to attribute each purchase to the served content. This offering will benefit advertisers by helping them make the most of their budgets, publishers by providing accurate attribution and helping build loyalty with their audience, and consumers by delivering relevant content and offers.

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Mastercard has unveiled a new digital media network designed to deliver personalized advertising across its owned channels and other channels. The new Mastercard Commerce Media will use insights from permissioned data to deliver personalized offers and content to consumers, and it will use proprietary card-linking technology to attribute conversion and incrementality for advertisers. Advertisers can use this digital media network to deliver tailored offers and content like cashback, discounts, incentives and advertising. Mastercard will use permissioned data about past purchase behavior and real purchase signals to identify the right audience for each offer. Because consumers who receive the offers will be able to activate them on their enrolled card, Mastercard will then be able to attribute each purchase to the served content. This offering will benefit advertisers by helping them make the most of their budgets, publishers by providing accurate attribution and helping build loyalty with their audience, and consumers by delivering relevant content and offers.

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Amazon announced the debut of Amazon Grocery, a new private-label brand that offers a range of grocery items, most of which are priced under $5. The brand offers everything from milk and olive oil to fresh produce, meat, and seafood. Amazon Fresh grocery items will be available online and at Amazon Fresh stores. The new label combines the Amazon Fresh and Happy Belly lines into one grocery essentials collection, Amazon says. The line will compete with other companies’ private label brands, like Walmart’s Great Value and Target’s Favorite Day. Amazon says the Amazon Grocery line includes new items such as fresh bakery cinnamon rolls, refrigerated pizza dough, bottled spring water, and more. In the coming months, Amazon will debut new frozen pasta meals, pie fillings, granola, sliced loaf cakes, expanded selections of deli meat, and more. Amazon says that its private-label brands continue to gain momentum, with customers purchasing 15% more private-brand products in 2024 compared to the previous year across Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market, and Amazon Fresh. “During a time when consumers are particularly price-conscious, Amazon Grocery delivers more than 1,000 quality grocery items across all categories that don’t compromise on quality or taste — from fresh food items to crave-worthy snacks and pantry essentials — all at low, competitive prices that help customers stretch their grocery budgets further,” said Jason Buechel, vice president of Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores and chief executive officer at Whole Foods Market.

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Amazon announced the debut of Amazon Grocery, a new private-label brand that offers a range of grocery items, most of which are priced under $5. The brand offers everything from milk and olive oil to fresh produce, meat, and seafood. Amazon Fresh grocery items will be available online and at Amazon Fresh stores. The new label combines the Amazon Fresh and Happy Belly lines into one grocery essentials collection, Amazon says. The line will compete with other companies’ private label brands, like Walmart’s Great Value and Target’s Favorite Day. Amazon says the Amazon Grocery line includes new items such as fresh bakery cinnamon rolls, refrigerated pizza dough, bottled spring water, and more. In the coming months, Amazon will debut new frozen pasta meals, pie fillings, granola, sliced loaf cakes, expanded selections of deli meat, and more. Amazon says that its private-label brands continue to gain momentum, with customers purchasing 15% more private-brand products in 2024 compared to the previous year across Amazon.com, Whole Foods Market, and Amazon Fresh. “During a time when consumers are particularly price-conscious, Amazon Grocery delivers more than 1,000 quality grocery items across all categories that don’t compromise on quality or taste — from fresh food items to crave-worthy snacks and pantry essentials — all at low, competitive prices that help customers stretch their grocery budgets further,” said Jason Buechel, vice president of Amazon Worldwide Grocery Stores and chief executive officer at Whole Foods Market.

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Better announced on Wednesday the launch of its Bank Statement home equity line of credit (HELOC) aimed at the 36.2 million small business owners in the United States who often don’t fit within traditional underwriting standards. The new program lets self-employed borrowers access home equity without tax returns, W-2s or profit-and-loss statements. Instead, applicants can verify income with 12 or 24 months of personal or business bank statements. Better’s TinMan, the company’s end-to-end loan origination system, analyzes those statements to calculate income trends and provide nearly instant approvals. The program eliminates physical appraisals and streamlines title insurance for loans up to $400,000, the company said. “Better’s HELOC customers consolidated $193 million in high-interest debt, generating an average monthly savings of $1,120 in Q2 2025,” said Vishal Garg, CEO and founder of Better.com. “Unlike traditional home equity lenders who operate on multiple fragmented and outdated point solutions, Tinman AI has been trained to detect alternative sources of data and automate verification without the need to review endless stacks of PDFs. Now that we’ve established the processes with our AI to deliver a seamless customer experience to small business owners across America, we’ve brought the Better Bank Statement HELOC to market.” The launch comes as household debt climbs, with credit card rates averaging 27% and personal loans topping 17%, according to Better. By contrast, HELOCs average about 8%, offering borrowers a lower-cost way to consolidate debt. Better said customers who used HELOC funds for consolidation improved credit scores, with gains ranging from 25 to 60 points. The biggest gains were among lower-credit FICO bond borrowers, with an average increase of 37 points. “With Better’s new Bank Statement HELOC, we believe we would have been able to capture over 6,000 customers that were previously denied — that translates to $600 million in home equity loans we could’ve helped fund had this program been in place,” said Chad Smith, president and chief operating officer of Better Mortgage Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Better. “This point of pain is why we developed a new product,  that will allow us to lean forward, help more customers, and continue to catalyze our growth as one of the fastest growing AI native home equity lenders in the country, growing over 150% year over year.” The Bank Statement HELOC targets small business owners, freelancers, gig workers and borrowers with complex or recently increased incomes. Customers can also apply through Betsy, Better’s AI loan assistant, by asking if they qualify with bank statements alone.

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Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO) has launched a program allowing tri-merge resellers to calculate and distribute its scores directly to mortgage companies, effectively bypassing the three nationwide credit bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. The move comes amid intensified competition with VantageScore, owned by the three bureaus, following the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) decision to let Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac  purchase loans underwritten with VantageScore 4.0 as an alternative to the Classic FICO score. “Today marks a turning point in how credit scores are delivered and priced across the mortgage industry,” said Will Lansing, CEO of FICO, in a statement. “This change eliminates unnecessary mark-ups on the FICO Score and puts pricing model choice in the hands of those who use FICO Scores to drive mortgage decisions.” Under the new program, FICO will charge in a performance model a $4.95 royalty fee per score. Additionally, a $33 funded loan fee per borrower per score will apply when the loan closes, replacing previous re-issue charges, as FICO recognizes the value its scores provide to insurers, investors and rating agencies. For lenders sticking with the traditional per score only model, the fee remains $10 per score through tri-merge resellers, consistent with prior pricing. FICO scores will remain available through the three nationwide credit bureaus on the same terms, though the company noted it “does not control any pricing mark-ups the bureaus may impose in their channels.” The company is still working with tri-merge resellers to implement the new direct license program. FICO scores are used by 90% of top U.S. lenders, it claims. FICO said the changes align with “calls from policymakers and industry leaders to modernize credit infrastructure and promote affordability, liquidity and access in the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage industry.” Scott Olson, executive director of Community Home Lenders of America (CHLA) said: “CHLA welcomes steps that like this to create more options for consumers and lenders, so this appears to be a good first step in addressing our longstanding criticisms about FICO’s monopolistic pricing and practices. Only time will tell, but we hope this direct license pricing will result in net savings — passed along to the borrower — and we will be watching and monitoring this as it plays itself out.”

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Amazon Connect, the cloud-based contact center service from AWS, now supports Get Customer Input and Store Customer Input flow blocks for outbound voice whisper flows. The Get Customer Input flow block allows a prompt to be played to a customer on an outbound call after they answer the call but before they are connected with an agent, and the customer’s response can be collected through either DTMF input or via an Amazon Lex Bot. This capability will allow you to capture interactive and dynamic customer input on outbound calls before these are connected to an agent. For example, you can use the Get Customer Input flow block to obtain customer consent for call recording as part of outbound calls placed by agents, and use it to trigger Amazon Connect Contact Lens recording and analytics.

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