Vanguard launched its first client-facing GenAI capability that equips financial advisors with efficient and personalized content for client communications. Vanguard’s Client-Ready Article Summaries produce customizable synopses of its top-read market perspectives tailored by financial acumen, investing life stage, and tone. It also generates the necessary disclosures to accompany the article summaries, creating an efficient and seamless information sharing experience for advisors. Sid Ratna, Head of Digital and Analytics for Vanguard Financial Advisor Services said “The best advisors can get even better with AI in their client toolkit, and Vanguard’s Client-Ready Article Summaries help advisors drive personalized and actionable conversations that enhance client relationships over the long-term.” Vanguard Financial Advisor Services provides investment services, portfolio analytics and consulting, and research to over 50,000 advisory firms comprising 150,000 advisors.1 Supporting advisors so they can best service their clients is integral to Vanguard’s mission of giving investors the best chance for investment success. In addition to rolling out the Client-Ready Article Summaries, Vanguard continues to experiment with advanced technologies, including spatial and quantum computing and blockchain, to improve investment outcomes, expand investor access, and deliver personalized experiences.
Agree.com’s AI-powered e-signature platform is different from competitors because it includes invoicing generation and payment processing
Agree.com says its AI-powered e-signature platform is different from competitors because it includes invoicing and payment processing. That’s why the company might have a shot at tackling the industry Goliath, Docusign. Because the startup makes its money from transaction fees for any money movement facilitated by its platform, Agree.com has made e-signatures free to all users. Agree.com uses AI on top of optimal character recognition (OCR) software so that it can auto-detect and label all of a contract’s input fields and signature blocks. Its technology can also identify and extract “any and all” payment terms to dynamically generate invoices. Because of its multitasking approach, Agree.com can potentially replace traditional e-signature software and invoicing and accounts receivable tools such as Bill.com. Agree extracts every character, indentation, semicolon, and hyphen to not only understand the type of contract being signed, but make it fully editable and collaborative with commenting, redlining, and version control. Agree’s “business model is truly unique: free software, monetized through invoicing and payments.”
Pinterest now lets shoppers use a “more expansive visual vocabulary” to ‘describe’ their style ideas.- generating the words they can use to figure out what they like about the image, and then further explore and shop
Pinterest is introducing new features to let users find ideas that match their personal tastes. The new visual search tools will first be available for women’s fashion content in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., eventually moving to more categories. The new tools let users find what they’re searching for without using words, by breaking down and decoding images so users can quickly search and shop for the details of an outfit they like. “Whether it’s an overall aesthetic, a color palette, a specific fit, or product category, when users view a Pin, we’ll now generate the words they can use to figure out what they like about the image, and then further explore and shop,” the company said. To help users identify and select the objects that they want more easily, the company says it has added a new animated glow. Also new is a “refinement bar” to help users narrow down their search results and find things that match their style. The company said the new search options are powered by visual language models (VLMs), a form of generative artificial intelligence (AI), to offer users a “more expansive visual ‘vocabulary’ to ‘describe’ their style ideas.” “Our visual search technology represents a shift in how users interact with and discover inspiration,” Dana Cho, Pinterest vice president of design, said. “We’re not simply delivering search results — we’re curating a personalized journey of discovery that empowers individuals to find their unique style, and shop it too.”
Samsung adds Green Dot’s embedded finance platform to digital wallets- a P2P tool to quickly transfer funds within minutes from Samsung Wallet to other digital wallets or contactless debit cards
Digital bank Green Dot announced a new partnership with Samsung Electronics to add new features and functionality to Samsung Wallet1, the secure, go-everywhere app for conveniently using and organizing daily essentials. Leveraging Green Dot’s comprehensive and configurable embedded finance platform, Arc, Samsung Wallet’s U.S. users will soon have access to Tap to Transfer2, a peer-to-peer (P2P) tool enabling users to quickly transfer funds within minutes3 from Samsung Wallet to other digital wallets or contactless debit cards, with additional features and functionality planned. Arc is the embedded finance platform of services featuring all of Green Dot’s secure banking and money processing capabilities designed to fuel value, loyalty and growth for consumers and businesses. Integrated with Green Dot Bank, Arc provides partners with leading FDIC-insured banking products and tools, plus regulatory and compliance expertise, oversight and support. “Our partnership with Samsung presents an enormous opportunity to bring convenient and instant peer-to-peer payments to Samsung’s vast user base,” said Crystal Bryant-Minter, SVP, Money Movement, Green Dot. “It also exemplifies Arc’s potential to power leading brands with seamless, secure financial experiences that deliver real value to everyday consumers.”
Prudent AI launches one-touch pre-qualification platform especially helpful for processing self-employed, Non-QM borrowers with 24/7 document submissions, real-time insights and loan recommendations
Prudent AI launched Prudent AI Upfront, a one-touch pre-qualification platform designed to improve lender sales funnels. The company claims the product is the mortgage industry’s first of its kind and allows lenders to process more applications, reduce fallout and capture more business. Upfront boosts sales funnel efficiency through three outcomes designed to eliminate manual intervention: 24/7 document submissions, real-time insights and loan recommendations, and evaluating borrower repayment ability in minutes instead of hours. Prudent AI claims that lenders who implemented Upfront reported a 60-70% reduction in document review time while expanding their sales pipelines and a seamless integration into their existing tech stacks. The platform is especially helpful for processing self-employed, Non-QM borrowers, company officials said. “The Non-QM market has long struggled with pre-qualification bottlenecks,” commented Paul Gigliotti, chief growth officer. “Upfront eliminates these barriers. Lenders can confidently serve this multi-trillion-dollar segment with unprecedented efficiency.”
Visa invests in Stablecoin infrastructure platform BVNK that processes more than $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd
Stabelcoin infrastructure platform BVNK received an investment from Visa. The new capital comes on the heels of a $50 million Series B funding round in December. “We’re proud to support BVNK as they help accelerate global adoption of stablecoin payments,” Rubail Birwadker, head of growth products and partnerships at Visa, said. “Stablecoins are fast becoming a part of global payment flows, and Visa invests in new technologies and builders like BVNK, staying at the forefront of what’s next in commerce to better serve our clients and partners.” There was $27 trillion in total stablecoin transaction volume globally across 1.25 billion transactions in 2024, per Visa Onchain Analytics. BVNK processes more than $12 billion annually for companies like Ferrari and Rapyd. “We’re experiencing a once-in-a-generation shift to a new foundational payment technology, powered by stablecoins,” BVNK co-founder and CEO Jesse Hemson Struthers said. “At BVNK, we’re building the infrastructure to make these new rails accessible to businesses, empowering them to operate at the speed of today’s economy.”
Nvidia has launched Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2, an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model that can transcribe 60 minutes of audio in 1 second with an average “Word Error Rate” of just 6.05%
Nvidia has launched Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2, an automatic speech recognition (ASR) model that can, “transcribe 60 minutes of audio in 1 second [mind blown emoji].” This version two is so powerful, it currently tops the Hugging Face Open ASR Leaderboard with an average “Word Error Rate” (times the model incorrectly transcribes a spoken word) of just 6.05% (out of 100). To put that in perspective, it nears proprietary transcription models such as OpenAI’s GPT-4o-transcribe (with a WER of 2.46% in English) and ElevenLabs Scribe (3.3%). The model boasts 600 million parameters and leverages a combination of the FastConformer encoder and TDT decoder architectures. It can transcribe an hour of audio in just one second, provided it’s running on Nvidia’s GPU-accelerated hardware. The performance benchmark is measured at an RTFx (Real-Time Factor) of 3386.02 with a batch size of 128, placing it at the top of current ASR benchmarks maintained by Hugging Face. Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2 is aimed at developers, researchers, and industry teams building applications such as transcription services, voice assistants, subtitle generators, and conversational AI platforms. The model supports punctuation, capitalization, and detailed word-level timestamping, offering a full transcription package for a wide range of speech-to-text needs. Developers can deploy the model using Nvidia’s NeMo toolkit. The setup process is compatible with Python and PyTorch, and the model can be used directly or fine-tuned for domain-specific tasks. The open-source license (CC-BY-4.0) also allows for commercial use, making it appealing to startups and enterprises alike. Parakeet-TDT-0.6B-v2 is optimized for Nvidia GPU environments, supporting hardware such as the A100, H100, T4, and V100 boards. While high-end GPUs maximize performance, the model can still be loaded on systems with as little as 2GB of RAM, allowing for broader deployment scenarios.
Stripe launches stablecoin accounts and AI foundation model to improve fraud detection and authorization rates trained on “subtle signals” per payment, which specialized models cannot capture
Among these, the company debuted an AI foundation model to improve fraud detection and authorization rates. Dubbed the Payments Foundation Model, it is trained on tens of billions of transactions and incorporates hundreds of “subtle signals” per payment, which it said specialized models cannot capture. The technology firm plans to deploy this model across its payments suite to improve performance in ways that were previously unattainable. Stripe stated that early results indicate the model’s effectiveness, particularly against card testing attacks, where it increased detection rates beyond the 80% reduction achieved over two years with previous models. By applying the new foundation model, Stripe increased its detection rate for attacks on large businesses by 64% practically overnight. In parallel, Stripe expanded its money management offerings with the launch of Stablecoin Financial Accounts, powered by stablecoins. Businesses using these accounts can hold balances in stablecoins, receive payments via both crypto and traditional fiat rails such as ACH and SEPA, and send stablecoins to most markets globally. These accounts are designed to be accessible to businesses in 101 countries. Initially, the accounts will support stablecoins USDC and Bridge’s USDB, with plans to incorporate additional currencies over time. Stripe also announced a deeper partnership with NVIDIA, which completed the fastest-ever migration to Stripe Billing.
Elavon and Jscrambler partner to strengthen PCI DSS compliance for merchants for requirements of 6.4.3 and 11.6.1
Elavon and Jscrambler have partnered to help merchants comply with PCI DSS requirements 6.4.3 and 11.6.1. Through this agreement, Elavon’s network of more than 400 merchants can leverage Jscrambler’s Client-Side Protection and Compliance Platform to safeguard their business from escalating web skimming attacks. Using Jscrambler’s Client-Side Protection and Compliance Platform and PCI DSS solution, merchants can meet PCI DSS requirements while preventing web skimming attacks, securing payment pages, and maintaining compliance efficiently. Now, through this collaboration, the two companies combine Elavon’s extensive experience as a global leader in payment processing with Jscrambler’s innovative technologies to address the critical need for robust payment security. Jscrambler’s PCI DSS solution delivers the following capabilities: Script Management: Auto-discovers and authorizes payment page scripts, reducing manual approvals by grouping vendor behaviors. Skimming Prevention: Blocks unauthorized data access in real-time, protecting against web skimming and formjacking. Tamper Detection: Monitors HTTP headers and page content, alerting on unauthorized changes via email, SIEM, or Slack. Hybrid Architecture: Supports agentless and agent-based deployment for flexibility, enabling rapid compliance for complex or acquired payment pages. PCI DSS Expertise: Provides direct access to former PCI Security Standards Council members and a strong bench of PCI DSS experts. QSA Alliance Program: Provides access to enablement sessions, assessor forums, and inventory reports to streamline audits. Andrew McCarroll, PCIP Customer Payment Security Executive, Elavon said “By partnering with Jscrambler, Elavon is offering merchants easy access to Jscrambler’s PCI DSS solution.”
Balance’s new RTP-powered Instant Bank Connection allows buyers to link their accounts using only routing and account numbers
Balance, the financial infrastructure platform for B2B commerce, launched Instant Bank Connection, a new capability powered by Real-Time Payment (RTP) rails that simplifies ACH setup for buyers and speeds up payments to merchants—improving cash flow and reducing processing costs. Balance’s new RTP-powered Instant Bank Connection capability allows buyers to link their accounts using only routing and account numbers. This real-time verification streamlines the buyer experience while giving merchants immediate payment confirmation, faster payouts, improved cash flow, and the ability to release goods sooner with confidence—accelerating fulfillment and strengthening customer relationships. Balance’s RTP-powered bank connection is more than just a faster onboarding method—it’s a strategic lever for B2B merchants looking to scale with efficiency. By making ACH payments as seamless as cards, merchants can unlock significantly lower processing costs. By combining RTP-powered bank verification with AI-powered credit management, billing, collections, and cash application, Balance empowers merchants to reduce overhead, improve cash flow, and scale with confidence. Bar Geron, CEO and Co-founder of Balance said “With RTP-enabled ACH payments, they can reduce costs and accelerate access to funds—all while giving buyers a smooth, payment experience.”