WaveCX, provider of personalized, digital product engagement solutions for financial institutions, launched Curator Command, a major advancement in digital banking user experience (UX) that transforms natural language requests into direct in-app action. Built as an extension of the Curator platform, Curator Command expands on its AI-driven, semantic search capabilities, moving beyond simply understanding user intent to acting on it. Digital banking users often face friction when trying to complete basic tasks, including navigating complex menus, disconnected flows and overloaded support teams. Curator Command eliminates this friction by instantly connecting user intent to the right screen, step or solution, streamlining task completion and reducing reliance on manual navigation. The system enables customers and employees to type requests in plain language, understands the intent, reads app structure and real-time context, and activates the appropriate response. Curator Command adapts to each financial institution’s policies, user roles and app structure, rather than relying on prebuilt workflows or manually tagged flows. The platform reads the interface, understands user context and delivers accurate results from day one. Key benefits for financial institutions include: Reduced support volume and faster resolution; Increased adoption of digital tools and services; Faster onboarding and lower training costs; and A more responsive and intuitive user experience
PayPal to offer users a 3.7% annual rewards rate on holdings of the PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin in their PayPal or Venmo wallets
PayPal Holdings will launch a rewards program this summer that will allow users to earn rewards on holdings of the PayPal USD (PYUSD) stablecoin in their PayPal or Venmo wallets. The company expects to offer a 3.7% annual rewards rate upon the launch of the program, although it can change the rate at any time. Users will be able to immediately use the rewards to send to other PayPal or Venmo users, fund international transfers, exchange for fiat, convert to other cryptocurrencies or make purchases at merchants with PayPal Checkout. “Consumers and businesses use PYUSD today for commerce, crypto, peer-to-peer transfers and B2B payments,” PayPal President and CEO Alex Chriss said. Michelle Gill, general manager of small business and financial services at PayPal, said the company expects to use the stablecoin to power a new B2B bill pay offering. “B2B bill pay is tapping into a $2 trillion market,” Gill said. “This is exciting not just for our merchants, but also for PayPal in that it opens up a brand-new network. … They now get to invite their vendors and their suppliers to join the PayPal ecosystem. … By the end of 2025, we hope to power all of this through PYUSD.”
Amazon Bedrock serverless endpoint system dynamically predicts the response quality of each model and efficiently routes it to the most appropriate model based on cost and response quality
Amazon Bedrock has announced the general availability of its Intelligent Prompt Routing, a serverless endpoint that efficiently routes requests between different foundation models within the same model family. The system dynamically predicts the response quality of each model for a request and routes the request to the model it determines is most appropriate based on cost and response quality. The system incorporates state-of-the-art methods for training routers for different sets of models, tasks, and prompts. Users can use the default prompt routers provided by Amazon Bedrock or configure their own prompt routers to adjust for performance linearly between the performance of two candidate LLMs. The system has reduced the overhead of added components by over 20% to approximately 85 ms (P90), resulting in an overall latency and cost benefit compared to always hitting the larger/more expensive model. Amazon Bedrock has conducted internal tests with proprietary and public data to evaluate the system’s performance metrics.
MoneyThumb’s AI enables the authentication of third-party PDF documents to analyze structural, metadata, and content-based patterns
MoneyThumb, a leader in automated document evaluation and fraud detection solutions, was awarded a U.S. patent for its Thumbprint product, an AI-driven technology that enables the authentication of third-party PDF documents. MoneyThumb’s Thumbprint patented technology leverages AI and advanced algorithms to analyze structural, metadata, and content-based patterns within PDF files. By identifying subtle discrepancies and inconsistencies, Thumbprint® helps detect fraud with its AI file tampering detection scoring model that identifies fraudulent activity in seconds, giving funders a powerful defense against risk and loan losses. Ryan Campbell, chief executive officer of MoneyThumb said “By formally protecting our IP, we’re not only strengthening our unique approach but also advancing the fight against digital document fraud across industries like lending, finance, law, and real estate.” MoneyThumb is transforming the lending industry by leading the shift from manual document processes to full automation. Its advanced technology streamlines data extraction and analysis, enabling funders to make faster, more accurate decisions.
Albertsons adds video functionality to its retail media network to enable advertisers to place shoppable video ads into e-commerce site
Albertsons Companies is deploying the Criteo Onsite Video solution to place shoppable video ads from CPG companies participating in its Albertsons Media Collective retail media network. As a result, Albertsons can now offer CPG advertisers a full-funnel onsite advertising suite combining video, display and sponsored product ad formats in one unified platform. Albertsons Media Collective is a beta partner for Criteo Onsite Video, and in a test campaign found that shoppers exposed to both onsite video and sponsored product ads delivered a 280% increase in click-through rates. When paired with sponsored product ads, onsite video ads also drove a 460% lift in sales. Other initiatives Albertsons intends to launch to enhance its retail media network in 2025 include bringing together the insights that Albertsons Media Collective has in order to create automation around its main media planning process, as well as bringing more transparency to measurement. “Video has always been a powerful storytelling tool but rarely a direct driver of commerce – until now,” said Stephen Howard-Sarin, managing director, retail media, Americas at Criteo. “It’s an incredibly exciting time for retail media. With the launch of onsite video into general availability, we’re giving brands, agencies and retailers the tools to captivate, convert and create meaningful shopping experiences.”
The U.S. Faster Payments Council is advocating for the use of email address and phone number identifiers via a shared, open digital directory to increase adoption of real-time payments and ensure interoperability
The U.S. Faster Payments Council advocated for the use of email address and phone number identifiers via a shared, open digital directory in a report this month as a way to increase adoption of real-time payments in the U.S. The council used a consumer bill payment example to show how an open directory could streamline and speed up the adoption of real-time payments in the U.S., explaining that existing closed loop directories aren’t inoperable and therefore hinder broader instant payment use. “As instant payments adoption continues to grow, financial institutions, fintechs, and payment service providers face challenges in managing account information, ensuring interoperability, and mitigating fraud risks,” the council said in an April 7 press release regarding the report. “Directory services play a key role in addressing these challenges by enabling seamless routing of payments and protecting sensitive payment credentials.” The Federal Reserve launched a real-time payments system called FedNow in 2023 and it competes with a private system called RTP that was started in 2017 by The Clearing House, which is owned by major banks. Both systems operate through banks. The U.S. has lagged other countries, such as India and Brazil, in cultivating use of such faster payment systems.
Bilt Rewards platform enables students to earn rewards on their student housing payments and redeem their rewards toward student loan repayments
Bilt Rewards now enables students to earn rewards on their student housing payments and redeem their rewards toward student loan payments. The first of these new capabilities results from the expansion of the Bilt Rewards network of homes to include student housing properties, beginning with those of its launch partner American Campus Communities (ACC). This partnership with ACC, which is a student housing company and a Blackstone portfolio company, will begin in late May at two properties at Baylor University and then expand in the coming months to the broader ACC portfolio that serves nearly 140,000 students. The collaboration extends to student housing properties the Bilt Rewards payments and commerce network that transforms housing and neighborhood spending into rewards and benefits. The other new feature announced — the ability for Bilt members to redeem their Bilt Points toward eligible student loan payments — is the first of its kind for Bilt Rewards. Starting Wednesday, Bilt members can redeem Bilt Points on student loans with five servicers: Nelnet, MOHELA, Sallie Mae, Aidvantage and Navient.
OpenAI is planning a truly ‘open reasoning’ AI system with a ‘handoff’ feature that would enable it to make calls to the OpenAI API to access other, larger models for a substantial computational lift
OpenAI is gearing up to release an AI system that’s truly “open,” meaning it’ll be available for download at no cost and not gated behind an API. Beyond its benchmark performance, OpenAI may have a key feature up its sleeve — one that could make its open “reasoning” model highly competitive. Company leaders have been discussing plans to enable the open model to connect to OpenAI’s cloud-hosted models to better answer complex queries. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described the capability as a “handoff.” If the feature — as sources describe it — makes it into the open model, it will be able to make calls to the OpenAI API to access the company’s other, larger models for a substantial computational lift. It’s unclear if the open model will have the ability to access some of the many tools OpenAI’s models can use, like web search and image generation. The idea for the handoff feature was suggested by a developer during one of OpenAI’s recent developer forums, according to a source. The suggestion appears to have gained traction within the company. OpenAI has been hosting a series of community feedback events with developers to help shape its upcoming open model release. A local model that can tap into more powerful cloud systems brings to mind Apple Intelligence, Apple’s suite of AI capabilities that uses a combination of on-device models and models running in “private” data centers. OpenAI stands to benefit in obvious ways. Beyond generating incremental revenue, a handoff could rope more members of the open source community into the company’s premium ecosystem.
Amazon’s new benchmark to evaluate AI coding agents’ ability to navigate and understand complex codebases and GitHub issues
Amazon has introduced SWE-PolyBench, the first industry benchmark to evaluate AI coding agents’ ability to navigate and understand complex codebases. The benchmark, which measures system performance in GitHub issues, has spurred the development of capable coding agents and has become the de-facto standard for coding agent benchmarking. SWE-PolyBench contains over 2,000 curated issues in four languages and a stratified subset of 500 issues for rapid experimentation. The benchmark aims to advance AI performance in real-world scenarios. Key features of SWE-PolyBench at a glance: Multi-Language Support: Java (165 tasks), JavaScript (1017 tasks), TypeScript (729 tasks), and Python (199 tasks). Extensive Dataset: 2110 instances from 21 repositories ranging from web frameworks to code editors and ML tools, on the same scale as SWE-Bench full with more repository. Task Variety: Includes bug fixes, feature requests, and code refactoring. Faster Experimentation: SWE-PolyBench500 is a stratified subset for efficient experimentation. Leaderboard: A leaderboard with a rich set of metrics for transparent benchmarking.
VoPay’s solution enables banks and SaaS platforms to offer full-stack embedded real-time cross border payments by using APIs, white-label deployment or through no-code services
Embedded financial technology provider VoPay has announced the launch of its new Cross-Border Payments-As-A-Service solution. The white-label technology will enable organisations to move money around the world with full transparency, compliance, and real-time FX. In addition, being built for software platforms and financial institutions, the product will allow firms to benefit from its features without the need to build their own cross-border infrastructure. With this solution, partners and collaborators will have the possibility to expand into global markets and deliver a secure cross-border payment offering. VoPay will continue to focus on meeting the needs, preferences, and demands of clients and users in an ever-evolving market, while prioritising the process of remaining compliant with the regulatory requirements and laws of the industry as well. In addition, VoPay’s solution is purpose-built to serve vertical SaaS platforms, digital marketplaces, and ERP providers, as well as payroll platforms and financial institutions that are looking to unlock new revenue from international money movement. Included in its key capabilities are a full-stack embedded payments, real-time FX engine, compliance by design, end-to-end orchestration, white-label flexibility, and speed to market features. Software platforms and FIs can launch Cross-Border Payments in a way that fits their business model. This includes the possibility to embed the experience directly into their platform using branded UI components and developer-first APIs, launch a Turnkey Solution using VoPay’s white-label deployment model, or access no-code services from the company’s dashboard with full functionality–zero development needed.