FIS has launched its next-generation enterprise treasury platform, Treasury and Risk Manager – Quantum Cloud Edition. This cloud-native solution can support increased workloads, larger transaction volumes, and increased enterprise connectivity, scaling these capabilities to provide CFOs and corporate treasurers with greater visibility of risks; improved data-driven decision-making; and faster, more efficient money movement. FIS is launching its enhanced solution as CFOs and corporate treasurers increasingly need to accelerate performance across their technology infrastructure. According to EY, 65% of businesses have made strategic investments in the cloud, but only 32% are achieving their goals for the technology, a dynamic that reinforces the importance of true scalability for more effective cloud-based ecosystems. By running on a public cloud, this solution not only features stronger data processing power and connectivity, but also can provide a new level of flexibility for quicker implementations, faster product upgrades and more seamless rollouts of new capabilities. In addition to leveraging the power of the public cloud, this version of FIS’ treasury and risk management solution offers a new Liquidity Hub module for harnessing data from multiple sources – such as enterprise resource planning systems and bank APIs – to enable cash-management analysis in real time.
Socure launches advanced pre-fill solution achieving a 91% match rate—far surpassing the industry average of 66% achieved with device intelligence, ID Graph Intelligence, and multiple layers of authentication directly from the carriers
Socure, has launched Socure’s Advanced Pre-Fill, a groundbreaking solution that redefines the customer onboarding experience, leveraging RiskOS™. Socure’s Advanced Pre-Fill dramatically streamlines onboarding by pre-populating application forms with the highest-verified identity information available—delivering speed, security, and scalability like never before. Socure’s Advanced Pre-Fill eliminates that friction by requiring minimal input from users, all while achieving a 91% match rate—far surpassing the industry average of 66%. This performance leap translates into higher conversion rates, faster time to fund, and reduced customer drop-off. Unlike legacy systems that rely heavily on limiting phone or credit header data, Socure’s solution taps into a vast array of authoritative signals—phone and carrier data, device information, graph intelligence, multi-bureau, tax, public records and more—to construct a rich, multi-dimensional view of identity. Socure’s Advanced Pre-Fill is available via client-side and server-side SDKs and APIs, making it easy to integrate into any digital application experience. Socure’s Advanced Pre-Fill accelerates customer onboarding by implementing form fill automation with authenticated data. Device Intelligence, ID Graph Intelligence, and multiple layers of authentication directly from the carriers not only ensures the best possible population coverage and entity resolution, but additionally plays a role in enabling instant fraud decisions. Socure Advanced Pre-Fill delivers measurable business impact through: Enhanced User Experience, Operational Efficiency, Improved Security
PayPal’s new Offsite Ads, lets advertisers to tap into its transaction graph to reach millions with display and video advertising
PayPal is announcing the launch of Offsite Ads, a new way for advertisers to tap into the power of PayPal’s transaction graph and reach millions of consumers across the open web through display and video advertising. Offsite Ads is built on PayPal’s extensive two-sided network that connects millions of merchants and consumers, bringing a new level of precision to advertising by making cross-merchant transaction insights available — all while respecting consumer privacy. Unlike traditional approaches that rely heavily on browsing behavior or probabilistic models, PayPal Offsite Ads is powered by actual purchase data across millions of merchants. This enables brands to reach highly relevant audiences based on real shopping intent, not just inferred interest. For the first time, advertisers can leverage PayPal’s understanding of when and where people actually buy — across a wide range of categories — to inform smarter media buying decisions. PayPal allows brands to connect with audiences in a different and more relevant way than standard third-party cookie-based or contextual targeting methods. Publicis Media will be the first agency partner to offer Offsite Ads to brands, enabling advertisers to bring more precision, rigor and performance to advertising across platforms. PayPal Offsite Ads are available through leading channels, allowing advertisers to activate campaigns at scale across premium websites, apps, and CTV environments, while ensuring seamless integration with existing media buying strategies.
Paze checkout reports loading 150 million debit and credit card accounts; partners Fiserv to attract more banks to offer the digital wallet
Paze, the digital wallet launched last year by Early Warning Services, has loaded 150 million debit and credit card accounts onto its nascent system. Now, those bank customer card holders can opt into the wallet if they’re interested in using it. More big banks are expected to link to Paze later this year, Early Warning’s Chief Partnership Officer Eric Hoffman said. He spoke alongside Deva Annamalai, Fiserv’s head of client strategy and solutions for digital payments. The processor is partnering with EWS to attract more banks to offer the digital wallet to their customers for online purchases. With Fiserv, there is “exposure to thousands of banks,” Hoffman said, explaining how additional banks will disclose working with Paze as they announce that the service is available to those banks’ customers. As Fiserv helps bring its bank clients onto the Paze system, it will benefit from the increased transaction volume it processes through the digital wallet. Some 70% of U.S. consumers don’t use a digital wallet so there is a broad opportunity to attract new users without having to do battle with some of the long-time rivals in the field, namely Apple Pay and PayPal, Hoffman said. Paze will be directed at consumers between 35 and 65 years-old who tend to be wealthy, and have been “protectionist” in their thinking about digital wallets, Hoffman said. This group has generally avoided using digital wallets so far, but they’re likely to sign up for Paze if it’s offered by their banks, just like they did with Zelle, he said.
FTC order requires Workado to offer competent and reliable evidence to support the 98% accuracy and efficacy claims of its AI content detection product
The Federal Trade Commission issued a proposed order requiring Workado, LLC to stop advertising the accuracy of its AI detection products unless it maintains competent and reliable evidence showing those products are as accurate as claimed. The settlement will be subject to public comment before becoming final. The order settles allegations that Workado promoted its AI Content Detector as “98 percent” accurate in detecting whether text was written by AI or human. But independent testing showed the accuracy rate on general-purpose content was just 53 percent, according to the FTC’s administrative complaint. The FTC alleges that Workado violated the FTC Act because the “98 percent” claim was false, misleading, or non-substantiated. The proposed order settling the complaint is designed to ensure Workado does noat engage in similar false, misleading, or unsupported advertising in the future. Under the proposed order, Workado: 1) Is prohibited from making any representations about the effectiveness of any covered product unless it is not misleading, and the company has competent and reliable evidence to support the claim at the time it is made; 2) Is required to retain any evidence it uses to support such efficacy claims; 3) Must email eligible consumers about the consent order and settlement with the Commission; and 4) Must submit compliance reports to the FTC one year after the order is issued and every year for the following three years.
Mastercard’s Agentic Payments Program applies tokenization to integrate trusted, seamless payments experiences into the tailored recommendations and insights already provided on conversational AI platforms
Mastercard announced the launch of its Agentic Payments Program, Mastercard Agent Pay. The groundbreaking solution integrates with agentic AI to revolutionize commerce. Mastercard Agent Pay will deliver smarter, more secure, and more personal payments experiences to consumers, merchants, and issuers. The program introduces Mastercard Agentic Tokens, which build upon proven tokenization capabilities that today power global commerce solutions like mobile contactless payments, secure card-on-file, and Mastercard Payment Passkeys, as well as programmable payments like recurring expenses and subscriptions. This helps unlock an agentic commerce future where consumers and businesses can transact with trust, security, and control. Mastercard will collaborate with Microsoft on new use cases to scale agentic commerce, with other leading AI platforms to follow. Mastercard will also partner with technology enablers like IBM, with its watsonx Orchestrate product, to accelerate B2B use cases. In addition, Mastercard will work with acquirers and checkout players like Braintree and Checkout.com to enhance the tokenization capabilities they are already using today with merchants to deliver safe, transparent agentic payments. For banks, tokenized payment credentials will be seamlessly integrated across agentic commerce platforms, keeping card issuers at the forefront of this rapidly evolving technology with enhanced visibility, security, and control. Mastercard Agent Pay will enhance generative AI conversations for people and businesses alike by integrating trusted, seamless payments experiences into the tailored recommendations and insights already provided on conversational platforms. By identifying and validating a customer using Mastercard’s tokenization technology, a retailer will be able to offer a meaningful and consistent shopping experience, layering on relevant and personalized benefits, such as recommended products, free delivery, rewards, and discounts. Mastercard will work with Microsoft to integrate Microsoft’s leading AI technologies, including Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Microsoft Copilot Studio, with Mastercard’s trusted payment solutions to develop and scale agentic commerce, addressing the evolving needs of the entire commerce value chain.
App makers form lobbying group to challenge smartphone manufacturers calling for hardware and software interoperability, a level playing field in the app marketplace and age verification at the app store level
Technology companies Meta, Spotify, Match Group and Garmin have founded a lobbying group that said it will “combat anti-competitive practices by smartphone platform owners.” The Coalition for a Competitive Mobile Experience (CCME) will advocate for hardware and software interoperability, a level playing field in the app marketplace and age verification at the app store level. Specifically, the group said that smartphone providers should ensure that competitors’ software, apps and hardware work seamlessly with their devices; app store providers should allow competing app stores to work on their operating systems without unreasonable interference; and app stores should be responsible for enforcing age-based content restrictions. “Smartphones have become one of the most important tools in our daily lives, but the mobile experience is controlled by gatekeepers that have used their control of the market to stifle competition and choice at the expense of consumers,” CCME Director Brandon Kressin said. The issues on which the group is focused “will give consumers the power they deserve, providing more freedom and access, all while lowering costs,” Kressin said.
The ‘era of experience’ will unleash self-learning AI agents across the web— AI systems rely increasingly less on human-provided data and improve themselves by gathering data from and interacting with the world
David Silver and Richard Sutton, two renowned AI scientists, argue in a new paper that artificial intelligence is about to enter a new phase, the “Era of Experience.” This is where AI systems rely increasingly less on human-provided data and improve themselves by gathering data from and interacting with the world. While the paper is conceptual and forward-looking, it has direct implications for enterprises that aim to build with and for future AI agents and systems. According to the authors, in addition to learning from their own experiential data, future AI systems will “break through the limitations of human-centric AI systems” across four dimensions: Streams, Actions and observations, Rewards, Planning and reasoning. Buried in Sutton and Silver’s paper is an observation that will have important implications for real-world applications: “The agent may use ‘human-friendly’ actions and observations such as user interfaces, that naturally facilitate communication and collaboration with the user. The agent may also take ‘machine-friendly’ actions that execute code and call APIs, allowing the agent to act autonomously in service of its goals.” The era of experience means that developers will have to build their applications not only for humans but also with AI agents in mind. You will also need to design your APIs and agentic interfaces to provide access to both actions and observations. This will enable agents to gradually reason about and learn from their interactions with your applications. If the vision that Sutton and Silver present becomes reality, there will soon be billions of agents roaming around the web (and soon in the physical world) to accomplish tasks. “By building upon the foundations of RL and adapting its core principles to the challenges of this new era, we can unlock the full potential of autonomous learning and pave the way to truly superhuman intelligence,” Sutton and Silver write.
Humanoid robot mass adoption will start in 2028, says Bank Of America- annual shipments could hit 1 million by 2030, with a production cost of just $17,000 per unit
Humanoid robots will begin a mass adoption trend for commercial use as early as 2028, according to a new Bank of America research report. Annual shipments could hit 1 million by 2030, with a production cost of just $17,000 per unit. “BofA Global Research believes the adoption of humanoid robots will follow a three-stage development trajectory in the coming decade, starting from industrial and logistic applications, then on to business services, and finally to household use,” a company representative told me via email. “In the long run, BofA Global Research expects the total units in ownership for humanoid robots to reach an estimated three billion units globally by 2060.” That three billion unit projection is based on three assumptions:
- Humanoid robots can replace 20% of the world’ industrial sector human employees
- Humanoid robots can replace between 1.5 and 2.5 works in the industrial and service sectors
- Humanoid robots will reach a penetration rate of .7 units per household
According to the report, the first mass commercializations period for humanoid robots will be from 2028 to 2034, and it will focus on commercial use. The second mass adoption period will be for home and all other uses, and will run from 2035 onwards. Futurists like Peter Diamandis have speculated that robots will help us in our homes with laundry, vacuuming, dishes, and all other tasks, and serve multiple purposes in healthcare, elder care, manufacturing, transport, and the service industry. Bank of America says that humanoid robot manufactures will ship 18,000 units this year, in 2025. By 2030, researchers expect that shipments will reach up to 10 million units globally per year. Interestingly, the report suggests that the vast majority of humanoid robots will be household tools, with about two billion of the three billion shipped by 2060 in use in private homes, versus about a billion in the service industry, and only a few hundred million in industrial settings. If so, that could be good news for human workers: many of the household robots will be replacing unpaid work that people do for themselves, rather than paid work by employees.
Microsoft’s most capable new Phi 4 AI model rivals the performance of far larger systems, yet small enough for low-latency environments
Microsoft launched several new “open” AI models, the most capable of which is competitive with OpenAI’s o3-mini on at least one benchmark. All of the new pemissively licensed models — Phi 4 mini reasoning, Phi 4 reasoning, and Phi 4 reasoning plus — are “reasoning” models, meaning they’re able to spend more time fact-checking solutions to complex problems. Phi 4 mini reasoning was trained on roughly 1 million synthetic math problems generated by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s R1 reasoning model. Around 3.8 billion parameters in size, Phi 4 mini reasoning is designed for educational applications, like “embedded tutoring” on lightweight devices. Parameters roughly correspond to a model’s problem-solving skills, and models with more parameters generally perform better than those with fewer parameters. Phi 4 reasoning, a 14-billion-parameter model, was trained using “high-quality” web data as well as “curated demonstrations” from OpenAI’s o3-mini. It’s best for math, science, and coding applications. As for Phi 4 reasoning plus, it’s Microsoft’s previously released Phi-4 model adapted into a reasoning model to achieve better accuracy on particular tasks. Phi 4 reasoning plus approaches the performance levels of R1, a model with significantly more parameters (671 billion). The company’s internal benchmarking also has Phi 4 reasoning plus matching o3-mini on OmniMath, a math skills test. “Using distillation, reinforcement learning, and high-quality data, these [new] models balance size and performance,” wrote Microsoft in a blog post. “They are small enough for low-latency environments yet maintain strong reasoning capabilities that rival much bigger models. This blend allows even resource-limited devices to perform complex reasoning tasks efficiently.”