FV Bank has launched its new Virtual Account feature, empowering business clients to automate and streamline the attribution of incoming international payments with unique, dedicated account numbers. With this feature, FV Bank customers can now pre-generate virtual account numbers for each of their clients or counterparties, enabling seamless automation of incoming payment attribution. Businesses can assign a unique virtual account number and deposit instructions to every client, ensuring that when a client sends a SWIFT wire, ACH, Domestic Wire or USDC Stablecoin to this virtual account, FV Bank automatically tags and attributes the deposit to the underlying counterparty. This Virtual Account structure also significantly improves FV Bank’s compliance controls through enhanced KYCC (Know Your Customer’s Customer), enabling FV Bank to improve its transactional monitoring and KYC structures. Key features of the Virtual Account solution include: Unique virtual account numbers for each counterparty; Support for incoming international wire (SWIFT), ACH, Domestic Wires and Stablecoin deposits; API availability for integration into client platforms; Robust reporting tools; Enhanced KYCC and monitoring controls.
Insomnia Labs’s platform offers digital creators stablecoin-based credit against future earnings using real-time, AI-powered underwriting and embeds payments directly into the platforms they already use
Insomnia Labs has launched CreatorFi, a platform offering stablecoin-based credit for digital creators built on Avalanche. Debuting with a $12 million credit facility from Kamui Finance and others, CreatorFi reshapes how creators access funding by integrating financial tools directly into the platforms they already use and providing them with seamless, fast, and flexible advances against their future earnings. CreatorFi gives creators the ability to borrow against future earnings—like YouTube ad revenue, music royalties, or subscription income—using smart underwriting tools and blockchain-based infrastructure. With support for both fiat and stablecoin lending, the platform enables low-cost, global access to credit with real-time, AI-powered underwriting and embedded payments directly through the platforms creators already use. By precisely controlling and tracking stablecoin funds allocated for creator loans, CDP Wallets orchestrate each payout in an accurate, transparent, and auditable manner. Coinbase Offramp further enhances this efficiency by enabling creators to instantly convert their stablecoin advances into local currencies, providing seamless global access to their capital. This integrated approach simplifies and accelerates creators’ access to funds while offering clear visibility to lenders and institutional partners.
Deepfake menace requires contextual and behavioral baselining- security systems must learn what normal communication patterns, linguistic fingerprints, and working hours look like for every user and flag deviations not just in metadata, but also in tone, semantics and emotional affect
Modern phishing attacks exploit trust. Our current security posture and tools aren’t built for that. Most phishing defenses rely on identifying suspicious patterns, such as malformed URLs, unusual IP addresses and inconsistent metadata. Deepfake-driven phishing skips all of that. Security awareness training is falling behind, too. Even newer solutions such as deepfake detection AI are only partially effective. What’s needed is a shift toward contextual and behavioral baselining. Security systems must learn what normal communication patterns, linguistic fingerprints, and working hours look like for every user and flag deviations not just in metadata, but also in tone, semantics and emotional affect. LLMs can be trained on internal communication logs to detect when an incoming message doesn’t quite match a sender’s established patterns. Static multifactor authentication must also evolve into a continuous process that encompasses biometrics, device location, behavioral rhythm and other factors that add friction to the impersonation process. Prevention and response strategies should proceed along several fronts. Adversarial testing — a technique for evaluating the robustness of AI models by intentionally trying to fool them with specially crafted inputs — needs to go mainstream. Red teams must start incorporating AI-driven phishing simulations into their playbooks. Security teams should build synthetic personas internally, testing how well their defenses hold up when bombarded by believable but fake executives. Think of it as chaos engineering for trust. Vendors must embed resilience into their tools. Collaboration platforms such as Zoom, Slack and Teams need native verification protocols, not just third-party integrations. Watermarking AI-generated content is one approach, though not foolproof. Real-time provenance verification — or tracking when, how, and by whom content was created — is a better long-term approach. Policies need more teeth. Regulatory bodies should require disclosure of synthetic media in corporate communications. Financial institutions should flag anomalous behavior with more rigor. Governments need to standardize definitions and response protocols for synthetic impersonation threats, especially when they cross borders.
Gen Z creators are choosing affiliate tools as preferred monetization models over subscription and gated content models due to their flexibility, repeatable income and transparency
A new report from Collective Voice, reveals a generational shift in how creators approach monetization. 92% of creators, across all generations, view content creation as a professional pursuit rather than a side hustle, stating that affiliate is the core of how they will build their business. Gen Z is ushering in a new era of business-first creators who prioritize speed, simplicity, and affiliate tools to monetize quickly, rather than relying on traditional brand deals, subscription models, or co-creation models. Clair Sidman, vice president of Marketing at Collective Voice said “Gen Z starts their creator journey with baked-in expectations around earning potential. They’re choosing affiliate models because they offer flexible, repeatable income without waiting for brand deals.” Content Creation Is a Career: 92% of creators, across all generations, view content creation as a professional pursuit rather than a side hustle, stating that affiliate is the core of how they will build their business. Affiliate as Main Income Stream: Approximately 64% of creators use shoppable content to supplement their income, while fewer than 30% rely on it as their primary revenue source. Diverging Affiliate Strategies: While Millennials seek to diversify their revenue streams through multiple sources, including merchandise, subscriptions, and ad revenue, Gen Z creators tend to focus more narrowly on native affiliate payout referrals and seamless product integrations. Skeptical of Paywalls: Gen Z creators overwhelmingly prefer affiliate tools with flexibility and transparency over subscription and gated content models.
Kroger customers with loyalty card can grab printed flyer near the entrance of stores and scan a barcode on the flyer at checkout to download all the digital coupons at once without the need for app or internet
The Kroger Co. is giving its loyal shoppers easier access to digital deals. The national supermarket chain recently started adding paper flyers mirroring its weekly digital deals near the entrances of its stores. Kroger customers with a loyalty card can grab a printed handout when they enter the store to find out about the weekly digital deals. Then at checkout, shoppers scan a barcode on the flyer to download all of the digital coupons at once. Each coupon can be used up to five times in a single transaction. Using the printed flyer means that shoppers don’t have to go online or use the Kroger app to download each individual coupon. The Northeastern supermarket chain Stop & Shop also recently issued a brand-wide rollout of its innovative Savings Station. The in-store kiosk allows customers to quickly and easily activate all weekly circular digital coupons, as well as personalized offers – no smartphone, internet access or computer required. These in-store efforts from Kroger and Stop & Shop are finally helping to address digital discrimination in grocery. Seniors who aren’t tech-savvy and low-income families without smartphones could wind up paying higher prices, since they can’t easily access grocers’ digital deals.
Kira is an end-to-end, stablecoin-native infrastructure abstracting the complexity of DeFi and giving businesses a turnkey solution to launch embedded products, such as cross-border remittances, treasury automation, currency trading, import/export payments and global payroll solutions
Kira, a next-generation fintech infrastructure startup, has officially emerged from stealth mode, announcing it has hit $3 million in revenue in its first year of operations. Kira is building the first all-in-one infrastructure to launch embedded fintech products — supercharged by Vertical AI Agents and stablecoins. By abstracting the complexity of DeFi, Kira gives businesses a turnkey solution to launch embedded products, such as cross-border remittances, treasury automation, currency trading, import/export payments and global payroll solutions. Kira’s platform is the first of its kind: an end-to-end, stablecoin-native infrastructure built for scale. It includes: Universal Payment Gateway: Abstracts away complex rails into a single, AI-driven interface. Accept payments via cash, debit, ACH, or SWIFT through a white-labeled payment link; AI-Powered Treasury & Wallet Infrastructure: Let vertical agents manage yield-bearing wallets and optimize treasury across stablecoins and U.S. Treasuries — generating up to 7% yield; Agentic Compliance: Automate onboarding and regulatory workflows — from KYC/KYB to AML, VASP, and sanctions screening — with integrated APIs and customizable agent sessions; AI-Managed Instant Global Payouts: Autonomous agents can initiate global payouts in seconds — using localized payment methods that deliver directly into bank accounts in 35+ countries.
Prime Day 2025 is seeing a shift from impulse electronics to practical essentials driven by tighter budgets and rising skepticism over perceived value
Prime Day 2025 is seeing a shift from impulse electronics to practical essentials, signaling consumers are buying smarter. According to early reports, spending at the start of Prime Day Tuesday (July 8) was down 14%. PYMNTS Intelligence data reveal spending may have dropped not due to a lack of interest in the event, but because of tighter budgets and rising skepticism over perceived value. Flash deals on electronics, once the hallmark of Prime Day, underperformed per Tuesday sales data, while essentials like home goods, pet care, and household appliances fared better. It’s a shift from impulse to pragmatism. Prime Day’s spending contexts are also a reflection of subtle but seismic changes in how consumers pay. The old model — credit card plus shipping address — is fading. Instead, new habits are being formed around wallets, embedded finance and more payments innovations. BNPL orders for Amazon’s Prime Day, for example, were up 13.6% year over year for Tuesday’s shopping event. Amazon Prime Day 2025 was still a massive success by any traditional measure. But beneath the surface, a critical shift is underway, powered by AI innovation, payments optimization and changing consumer behavior. Adobe said that during Amazon’s Prime Day sales event, it expects the amount of traffic to all U.S. retailers that comes from generative AI chat services and browsers to leap 3,200% year over year.
American Eagle taps Snapchat to promote its more than 800 retail stores as back-to-school shopping destinations using the Snap Map location-sharing feature
American Eagle is teaming up with Snapchat to highlight its stores as back-to-school shopping destinations. Starting Wednesday, July 9, the specialty apparel retailer, a banner of American Eagle Outfitters Inc., is including more than 800 retail stores across the United States as Promoted Places on the Snap Map location-sharing feature. When Snapchat users check out the American Eagle Promoted Places on Snap Map, they can learn more about the location, read content from American Eagle, creators and other users, and click to shop on the American Eagle website for a seamless online shopping experience. American Eagle is also launching an augmented reality try-on Lens (virtual animations overlaid on a Snapchat photo) for jeans available in the Snapchat Lens carousel and the retailer’s public profile. American Eagle is the first specialty fashion retailer to leverage Promoted Places for promotional purposes, responding to data indicating more than 95% of Snapchat’s 400 million-plus global users are planning to shop in-store for back-to-school this year. The retailer initially partnered with Snapchat to offer a shoppable AR Lens showcasing select styles from a specially curated inaugural 200-piece resale collection offered in conjunction with ThredUp.
Frontier to back Arbor Energy’s commercial-scale power plant that will use a unique gasifier and run on waste biomass to produce electricity for a data center while also sequestering 99% of CO2 released by combustion for underground storage
Frontier, supported by Stripe, Google, and Meta, has partnered with startup Arbor Energy to remove 116,000 tons of carbon dioxide by the end of the decade. This agreement provides Arbor with $41 million to construct its first commercial-scale power plant in southern Louisiana, which will run on waste biomass to produce electricity for a data center while also sequestering CO2 for underground storage. The facility aims to generate 5 to 10 megawatts of electricity. Arbor has developed a unique gasifier, as off-the-shelf options were inadequate. This gasifier uses supercritical CO2 from the plant itself to process biomass, producing syngas, which is then burned to generate electricity. Most of the produced CO2 will be sent to a pipeline for permanent storage, with some redirected back to the gasifier. Arbor co-founder and CEO Brad Hartwig has previously, aptly described the power plant as a “vegetarian rocket engine.” The entire system captures 99% of the CO2 released by the combustion, far higher than competing methods. And because it’s burning biomass, the process removes carbon from the atmosphere. Frontier estimates there is between 1 to 5 gigatons of waste biomass available every year. Even if only 1 gigaton meets those standards, there’s still a lot of potential for BiCRS and its close cousin, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), to make a significant dent in future energy needs. For Frontier, Arbor will only burn biomass, ensuring the power plant will remove carbon as required by the deal.
Study finds Silent Generation and Boomer consumers prefer supermarkets as their top destination for food shopping while Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X prefer other formats as Walmart, ALDI, dollar stores and club stores
According to the latest study from The Feedback Group, supermarkets continue to be popular with older demographics, but are less compelling to younger shoppers. Asked about their most recent food shopping visit, Silent Generation and Boomer consumers chose supermarkets as their top destination. However, Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X prefer such other formats as Walmart, ALDI, dollar stores and club stores. Notably, supermarkets plummeted from the second-most shopped channel among Millennials and Gen X in 2024 to near the bottom this year. “A generational reshuffling is underway, with younger shoppers gravitating more toward other food formats, leaving supermarkets to re-evaluate how they engage this critical audience to remain relevant,” observed Brian Numainville, principal at The Feedback Group. Supermarket satisfaction remained high overall (4.39 on a five-point scale), with older shoppers and younger shoppers reporting higher satisfaction than middle generations. Shoppers using cashier-assisted lanes report higher satisfaction (4.45) versus self-checkout users (4.29), underscoring the continued worth of human interaction. Shoppers who couldn’t find all of the items they wanted rated their satisfaction considerably lower (3.99) than those who were able to find everything (4.47). Digital circular use once more surpassed print, with 52% of shoppers now using a digital ad, up from 48% last year. In-store mobile use continued to be strong, with one-third of shoppers using phones for such tasks as finding specials and accessing loyalty programs. In spite of robust social media use (88%), just 25% of shoppers are connected to their primary supermarket on any platform, which the research spotlighted as an area of opportunity, especially among younger consumers.