Soneium has announced a collaboration with real world asset (RWA) tokenization blockchain Plume, aiming to make tokenized Treasuries and private credit available to Soneium users. At a practical level, there’s Sony Bank, a digital only bank that has already offered its customers NFTs as rewards as well as tokenized assets, mainly in the form of real estate to date. Hence, apart from direct users of the Soneium blockchain, Sony Bank customers would make a good audience. But before that happens, the Plume network needs to launch, which is rumored to be imminent. Plume is a permissionless Layer 1 blockchain, that’s compatible with Ethereum and dedicated to tokenization. “The ability to offer access to real-world yield through tokenized assets is a major step forward in making blockchain services relevant to mainstream financial use cases,” said Ryohei Suzuki, Director of Sony Block Solutions Labs. “This partnership with Plume unlocks a compelling new layer of value for our ecosystem and users.” One of the challenges with the proliferation of blockchains, is the need to move assets between chains. Plume has a solution it refers to as SkyLink which uses LayerZero. For this partnership it would involve either burning or locking a token on the Plume network and simultaneously minting or unlocking a token on the Soneium network.
Splitit expanding its orchestration service to let processors participate in the transaction while giving them issuer channels through which to make direct offers to the consumer and also adding digital wallets to the mix
Splitit’s approach in the service economy is to construct an orchestration layer that lets customers pay for purchases over time using cards. “We’re expanding our service offering with more capabilities via the processor and the issuer based on the demand by these various players,” John Beisner, head of client success at Splitit, said. Among the near-term initiatives lies the ability to let processors participate in the transaction and give the issuer channels through which to make direct offers to the consumer amid a merchant interaction. As to the changing dynamics in the competitive arena of installment payments, Beisner said, “you’ve got the typical buy now, pay laters. You also have bank financing offers and other FinTechs involved in making financing offers to consumers.” “We think that by orchestrating that, bringing it into a single experience… we’re doing that at a level where it’s not just eCommerce, but it’s also for in-store transaction,” he said. “So, we’re trying to bring all of that together and provide a very focused capability to enhance the consumer experience. We’re also making sure that we maintain the relationship between the merchant and the consumers.” Consumers, in turn, discover that they can manage their funding more adroitly and find the spending power to “upgrade” their purchases to bigger-ticket choices as they don’t have to take out new loans to do so, he said. “We’re spending time getting out front of the transactions so that the consumer understands that they have options and that these are not loan-based options,” Beisner said. The checkout experience remains the same, as consumers enter their card details (or if they are already registered with a merchant, one-click checkout is an option). Splitit is also adding digital wallets to the mix, including Google Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, he said, “where the merchant does not even need to be signed up, where the customer can walk in with their wallet into any storefront and make a purchase — and then decide how they want to split those payments up,” he said. Splitit will also be rolling out a service where the merchant and the consumer share in the cost — “and we’ll still be using the ‘open to pay’ on a card to make that decision,” rather than a new loan, he said.
LendingClub is buying AI-powered spending intelligence platform Cushion that ingests users’ bank transactions and purchase data to help them track their bills, make on-time payments, manage subscriptions, build credit, and monitor BNPL loans
LendingClub announced the acquisition of intellectual property and select talent behind Cushion, an AI-powered spending intelligence platform, providing a natural complement to LendingClub’s suite of mobile financial products and experiences. Cushion’s AI-powered technology ingests users’ bank transactions and purchase information to help them track their bills, make on-time payments, manage subscriptions, build credit, and monitor BNPL loans. Scott Sanborn, CEO of LendingClub said, “Cushion’s technology complements our DebtIQ experience to provide our members with the tools and information they need to take control of their debt and spending. With credit card balances and interest rates at historic highs and consumers seeking ways to keep more of what they earn, the need for our solution has never been greater.” Adopting Cushion’s technology will eventually allow LendingClub to provide much-needed visibility into a consumer’s financial obligations beyond traditional credit monitoring. It builds on LendingClub’s acquisition of Tally in Q4 2024, which will simplify credit card management, help users optimize payments, reduce interest, and improve credit health.
Edward Jones partners CAIS to enable HNWIs and advisors to manage alt investments in addition to mutual funds and ETFs through unified managed accounts while also letting them do intelligent rebalancing, overall tax management, tax transitions
Edward Jones plans to provide a variety of private investment options through a deal with CAIS, which provides technology designed to unlock alternative investments for advisors and their clients. The service will be offered starting on May 5 through a business line called Edward Jones Generations, which is open to investors with $10 million or more in assets, but will eventually be extended to more of the firm’s clientele. Russ Tipper, principal and head of products at Edward Jones, said it’s too early to say what the criteria for investing in alternatives will eventually be set at. Rather than choosing a fixed investable asset threshold for all accounts, Edward Jones is more likely to look at every client’s portfolio individually and decide if alts have a place. “We’re going to make sure it’s an appropriate portion of a client’s portfolio, which could be as little as zero to as high as 20% depending on the objective they’re trying to solve for.” Edward Jones has roughly 9 million clients but doesn’t say how many have more than $10 million in investable assets.
FIS’s new turnkey, cloud-native solution is core agnostic and enables banks to connect to multiple payment networks and process payments within one platform via a single API
FIS has launched its Money Movement Hub, an innovative payments solution that helps to simplify the back-end infrastructure of financial institutions by enabling them to connect to multiple payment networks and process payments in one place. Designed as a turnkey solution for a wide range of institutions – from super regional banks to community banks – the Money Movement Hub supports a modernized payments journey that can change with each client’s needs. The flexible, cloud-native platform is core agnostic and allows banks to start with the payment types they need today, then add new capabilities over time through a “pay-as-you-grow” model. It delivers unified and secure money movement experiences that can be embedded across a variety of customer channels, helping institutions meet digital demands quickly and efficiently. The FIS Money Movement Hub helps to harmonize the payments ecosystem within a financial institution by facilitating the integration of major payment networks within one solution, via a single API. As well as helping to reduce complexity for organizations, the solution can increase the accuracy of payments, improve liquidity, and help to quickly remediate security risks. This innovative payments hub responds to evolving consumer demands for faster and more efficient payments, as well as regulatory changes, and aims to transform financial institutions’ money movement capabilities. Features of the FIS Money Movement Hub: Unified Integration; Cloud Native; Built-in Fraud Controls.
NielsenIQ report shows 59% of U.S. consumers open to buying more private label products if a larger variety were available while 72% think private labels are good alternatives to name-brand products
New data from NielsenIQ reveals that consumers are open to increasing their spending on store brand products if more items were available. In NIQ’s report, 59% of U.S. consumers say they would buy more private label products if a larger variety were available. The report also found that 72% of consumers said private labels are good alternatives to name-brand products, with 75% saying store brands are a good value for the money. At retail, consumers said they are most likely to purchase private label products at supermarket/grocery stores, dollar stores, discount retailers, and pharmacy/drug stores. Additionally, 59% of consumers said they trust store brands since they are endorsed by the retailer. That level of trust is consistent across four key demographic groups, with 58% of Baby Boomers, 55% of Gen X, 63% of Millennials, and 62% of Gen Z saying they trust private label brands. With annual sales of private label products up 4.1%, according to NIQ, nearly half of consumers (49%) said they’re likely buying more private label products than ever. The rate of sales growth for private label is outpacing the Top 100+ national brands (+2.4% annual sales growth), the Top 11-100 national brands (+2.3%), and the Top 10 national brands (+1.7%). The Nielsen report also highlighted the price differences between private label and national brands across several key categories. As a whole, branded products on average are sold at prices that are 19% higher than store brands.
Android adds support for OpenID standards to make handling digital credentials easy and secure by allowing any app to potentially become a “credential holder” and perform additional due-diligence steps required to verify any digital document
Google has given Android an OpenID upgrade to make handling digital credentials like virtual driving licences much easier and more secure. With native support for OpenID standards, Android apps and services can talk the same language when it comes to verifying who you are digitally. This update uses Android’s DigitalCredential API to bring in support for OpenID4VP (for showing your credentials) and OpenID4VCI (for getting new ones issued). It’s all part of Android’s push towards using open standards to ensure you’re not locked into one company’s way of doing things for your digital identity. The most obvious use people are talking about is digital identity documents like driving licences, passports, or national ID cards. But the potential goes way further. Google expects developers to get creative, using this tech for all sorts of things you might need to prove digitally. We’re talking education certificates, insurance details, gym memberships, event tickets, work permits – you name it. And it’s not just about official ‘wallet’ apps like Google Wallet or Samsung Wallet holding these credentials. Any app can potentially become a “credential holder.” Once you’ve picked, say, your digital driving licence, Android securely passes the request over to the wallet app that holds that specific licence. That app finishes the process, showing the credential to the verifier. This method also gives the wallet app a chance to “perform any additional due-diligence steps it needs to perform prior to releasing the credential to the verifier,” adding an extra layer of checks if needed. Receiving and storing new digital credentials is also getting standardised using the OpenID4VCI protocol. When someone needs to issue you a digital credential they can use this standard. To make sure Android knows what’s where when it’s time to show a credential, wallet apps need to tell the Credential Manager a bit about the credentials they hold. This info helps Android quickly find the right options for you when a request comes in.
The OpenID Foundation to demo a secure, privacy-preserving identity that supports cross-platform credential exchange, privacy-first architecture, and enterprise-grade securitycommunity to demo digital ID interoperability, DIF Labs taking proposals | Biometric Update
The OpenID Foundation is bringing together governments, standards bodies, technology vendors, end-user organizations and technical experts for a demonstration that “proves” a secure, privacy-preserving identity is “ready for prime time.” OpenID believes the single biggest barrier to seamless user experiences is interoperability, but in its upcoming showcase three specifications – the OpenID Verifiable Presentation (OID4VP), the High Assurance Interoperability Protocol (HAIP) and the Digital Credentials API (DC API) – are unified. “It’s a real-world demonstration of cross-platform credential exchange, privacy-first architecture, and enterprise-grade security,” the foundation said. Groups participating in the demo will include the NIST NCCoE, Mattr, Spruce, Animo, and 1Password among 10 teams developing digital wallets and verification solutions. They will work with credentials based on the ISO mDoc format widely utilized by mobile driver’s licenses, and Selective Disclosure JWTs (SD-JWTs). NIST NCCoE’s mDL architecture for opening a bank account, which uses the OID4VP, DC API and HAIP specifications, will also be demonstrated during the event.
Structify’s AI platform combines visual language model with human oversight to simplify data preparation by letting users create custom datasets by specifying the data schema, selecting sources, and deploying AI agents to extract that data through navigating the web
Startup Structify is taking aim at one of the most notorious pain points in the world of artificial intelligence and data analytics: the painstaking process of data preparation. The company’s platform uses a proprietary visual language model called DoRa to automate the gathering, cleaning, and structuring of data — a process that typically consumes up to 80% of data scientists’ time. At its core, Structify allows users to create custom datasets by specifying the data schema, selecting sources, and deploying AI agents to extract that data. The platform can handle everything from SEC filings and LinkedIn profiles to news articles and specialized industry documents. What sets Structify apart, is their in-house model DoRa, which navigates the web like a human would. This approach allows Structify to support a free tier, which will help democratize access to structured data. Structify’s vision is to “commoditize data” — making it something that can be easily recreated if lost. Finance teams use it to extract information from pitch decks, construction companies turn complex geotechnical documents into readable tables, and sales teams gather real-time organizational charts for their accounts. A key differentiator for Structify is its “quadruple verification” process, which combines AI with human oversight. This approach addresses a critical concern in AI development: ensuring accuracy. What differentiates Structify, according to CEO Alex Reichenbach, is its combination of speed and accuracy. Reichenbach claimed they had sped up their agent “10x while cutting cost ~16x” through model optimization and infrastructure improvements.
Platformization taking centre stage in cybersecurity driven by the need to create experience-driven engagement and safeguard complex, distributed environments where data, people and machines all intersect
Platformization is becoming a critical strategy in cybersecurity as organizations shift from fragmented tools to integrated platforms to manage growing threats, complex infrastructure and changing buyer expectations. Vendor consolidation and re-platformization are reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, but expectations often clash with reality on the show floor. As buyers shift toward experience-driven engagement, traditional booth strategies fall short. “I think we’re just consolidating those alphabet soups into specific platforms,” Jackie McGuire, principal analyst, security analytics, operations and strategy at theCUBE Research. said. “The IAM, PAM, all of the identity will become an identity platform. The data security, DSPM, all of that will be a data platform. We are seeing platformization, I just don’t think it’s quite the one login to rule them all that the big vendors would have you believe.” As the security perimeter disappears and digital threats reach into physical infrastructure, the importance of truly integrated platforms continues to rise. Organizations are no longer just defending networks, they’re safeguarding complex, distributed environments where data, people and machines all intersect. The challenge now is not just technical unification, but creating experiences and solutions that align with how modern buyers think, behave and invest, according to John Furrier, co-founder and executive analyst at theCUBE Research. “I call it the re-platformization, because some people are re-platforming, some are actually adopting platforms for the first time because they had best of breed,” he added. “The theme is homogeneous layers where you need data and people, using the Waymo example, where you have so much data and devices or things connected that you need to have data controls. That’s become a big theme.”