Billie, the new standard for B2B payments and a leading provider of payment solutions for business customers, is expanding its availability on Stripe. After launching just last summer, Billie is now the first B2B Pay Later provider to reach general availability status on Stripe’s financial infrastructure. With this, any online shop or marketplace in more than ten countries can now offer Billie to their business customers easily. With Billie, business customers can make purchases and defer a payment for up to 30 days. At the same time, merchants receive payment upfront, making Billie’s payment method a beneficial tool for cash flow management of both merchants and business buyers. Billie makes this possible with real-time approval of buyers at checkout while providing default and fraud risk protection for merchants. Through partnering with Billie, Stripe expands its own offering and enables merchants to offer more payment options and flexibility to business buyers while reducing their credit risk and the administrative burden of collection and dunning processes to zero. Next to Pay Later, Billie is offering additional payment solutions and features including Installments, Trade Accounts, Consolidated Statements, and Recurring Payments. Billie’s solution is seamlessly integrated with Stripe’s platform, making the activation process a matter of minutes and requiring any merchant just to follow a few steps.
Soopra AI adapts AI-driven personas of celebrities and experts to engage in scheduling meetings between multiple parties, answering complex questions and supporting sales outreach
Soopra AI, a company that provides on-demand AI personas from experts for education and insights, raised $1 million in pre-seed funding to launch a platform for AI agents that can perform advanced functions. With this funding, the company said it is launching Soopra 2.0, also known as ASK, a social network for AI agents. Soopra said with the launch of ASK, a broader range of AI-driven personas of celebrities and experts could engage in more advanced functions such as scheduling meetings between multiple parties, answering complex questions and supporting sales outreach. Soopra’s platform allows educators to build personalized coursework based on their lecture series, which will enable them to provide 24/7 teaching assistance for students. Since the chatbot is interactive and uses their writing and guidance, it can come fairly close to what they’d say in real life. Although it’s not a perfect and just a facsimile, it can still provide a semblance of guidance when the professor is not available. “Soopra.ai says what I would say 95% of the time and does it instantly,” said Dr. Ronjon Nag, adjunct professor at Stanford University and founder of the venture capital firm R42 Group. “It’s been a powerful way to scale my presence, answer student questions, and share my expertise more broadly.”
Walmart US eCommerce sales jump 21% but tariffs are identified as an “immediate challenge” creating “unprecedented” cost pressure that Walmart cannot fully absorb
Walmart’s strong performance in eCommerce, including a 21% jump in U.S. sales and the achievement of U.S. eCommerce profitability for the first time, is seen as a key factor that can help offset cost pressures from tariffs and supply chain issues. Tariffs are identified as an “immediate challenge” creating “unprecedented” cost pressure that Walmart cannot fully absorb due to narrow retail margins, particularly those on China. This dynamic backdrop makes forecasting future earnings “difficult” and the near term “exceedingly difficult to forecast.” Although first-quarter revenue growth at 2.5% was slower than projected, the company saw strong underlying metrics including 4.5% growth in U.S. comparable store sales driven by increased transactions and average ticket size, with customers prioritizing value and speed across all income cohorts. Sam’s Club U.S. comp sales, excluding fuel, increased nearly 7% with strong growth in transactions. CFO John David Rainey said eCommerce sales in the segment grew by 27%, “led by triple digit growth in Club-fulfilled delivery and double digit growth in pickup.” In further evidence of digital shifts in omnichannel commerce, he noted that “Scan and Go” shopping was up with penetration growing 6% year over year. As for the margins tied to digital sales, said the CFO, “We achieved eCommerce profitability both in the U.S. as well as for the global enterprise in Q1 for the first time. In The U.S., eCommerce net delivery costs have declined as we’ve continued to densify our last mile deliveries and as customers pay fees for faster delivery.” Membership related income was 3.8% higher, with double-digit growth in Walmart+ fees.
Albertsons is rolling out the TreviPay Pay by Invoice solution to enable business buyers to receive a dedicated 30-day line of credit
Albertsons is rolling out the TreviPay Pay by Invoice solution to enable business buyers, including small offices, K-12 schools, local government and community organizations and residential programs, to receive a dedicated line of credit for online grocery purchases with 30-day net terms. The Albertsons pay by invoice program includes a self-serve portal to assign spending limits to approved purchasers and real-time tracking of invoices, payments and credit lines. TreviPay’s invoicing program offers the control to customize purchasing hierarchies and the convenience of paying using credit lines, which we know are important to this buyer segment. Through the partnership, stores across Albertsons Cos. banners can automate their acounts receivable processes for business purchases with real-time credit decisioning, electronic invoice generation and payment tracking, with the goals of reducing billing errors and eliminating back-office resources. TreviPay settles funds right away and owns any buyer credit risk. Enabling Albertsons Cos.’ business customers to pay by invoice allows their corporate buyers to make large, repeat orders using their preferred payment method, while retailers eliminate the complexities of accounts receivables and fuel growth.
Qvinci Software simplifies financial analysis of multi-entity businesses- Eliminations Entries feature removes the impact of transactions between related companies
Qvinci Software has launched new products and enhancements to strengthen their offering of automating time-consuming manual tasks common in traditional financial and business intelligence reporting, so that business leaders can focus on proactive, revenue-impacting initiatives. New Report Categorization and Packaging features enable searching, filtering, bulk-pinning, and building customized financial and business intelligence report packages in minutes, instead of hours or days using other accounting platforms. New Report Interact functionality allows for switching dollar/percentage views, filtering by specific entity in a multi-entity report, and focus mode to highlight cells that need attention – all without numerous data re-runs. A new suite of Business Intelligence Dashboards and Reporting Templates target key financial metrics that simplify impactful coaching and advising by identifying problem areas that need corrective action. For global organizations, Currency Conversion tools now fully support QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and Xero, eliminating the hassle of manual in-app currency adjustments. Qvinci Budgets with Future Budgeting enables users to import Excel-based budgets to use with templates for precise financial planning, as well as use Qvinci Budgets with QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, or QuickBooks by Class. With Non-Sunday Aligned Reporting, organizations (i.e., hospitality brands, franchises, faith-based institutions, etc.) can generate reports based on their busiest operational days using customizable accounting calendars. Now, “As Of Week” reporting is available, making it easy to define the week through which reports should be run. With enhanced Security Infrastructure – including multi-factor authentication, PCI certification, and a published formal security framework – Qvinci ensures enterprise-grade data protection. Lastly, Eliminations Entries, used to remove the impact of transactions between related companies, can now be handled directly within the Qvinci solution, cutting down drastically on needless complexity and manual labor.
Qvinci Software simplifies financial analysis of multi-entity businesses- Eliminations Entries feature removes the impact of transactions between related companies
Qvinci Software has launched new products and enhancements to strengthen their offering of automating time-consuming manual tasks common in traditional financial and business intelligence reporting, so that business leaders can focus on proactive, revenue-impacting initiatives. New Report Categorization and Packaging features enable searching, filtering, bulk-pinning, and building customized financial and business intelligence report packages in minutes, instead of hours or days using other accounting platforms. New Report Interact functionality allows for switching dollar/percentage views, filtering by specific entity in a multi-entity report, and focus mode to highlight cells that need attention – all without numerous data re-runs. A new suite of Business Intelligence Dashboards and Reporting Templates target key financial metrics that simplify impactful coaching and advising by identifying problem areas that need corrective action. For global organizations, Currency Conversion tools now fully support QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, and Xero, eliminating the hassle of manual in-app currency adjustments. Qvinci Budgets with Future Budgeting enables users to import Excel-based budgets to use with templates for precise financial planning, as well as use Qvinci Budgets with QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, or QuickBooks by Class. With Non-Sunday Aligned Reporting, organizations (i.e., hospitality brands, franchises, faith-based institutions, etc.) can generate reports based on their busiest operational days using customizable accounting calendars. Now, “As Of Week” reporting is available, making it easy to define the week through which reports should be run. With enhanced Security Infrastructure – including multi-factor authentication, PCI certification, and a published formal security framework – Qvinci ensures enterprise-grade data protection. Lastly, Eliminations Entries, used to remove the impact of transactions between related companies, can now be handled directly within the Qvinci solution, cutting down drastically on needless complexity and manual labor.
Monzo’s new ‘Undo Payments,’ holding window feature offers a configurable delay, ranging from 10 to 60 seconds, before a payment is finalised, during which the sender can halt the transaction
Monzo has started rolling out a new feature that allows users to cancel a bank transfer shortly after initiating it. The tool, known as ‘Undo Payments,’ offers a configurable delay, ranging from 10 to 60 seconds, before a payment is finalised, during which the sender can halt the transaction. The launch follows internal research by the bank showing that around 30% of UK adults have sent money to the wrong person or entered the incorrect amount in the past year. More than three-quarters of those who made a payment error reportedly realised the mistake within one minute. The Undo Payments feature acts as a brief holding window after a transfer is authorised. During this time, users can reverse the transaction directly from the payment confirmation screen, the home screen, or the specific transaction detail page. If the undo option is selected within the chosen time frame, the funds remain in the user’s account and the intended recipient is not notified of the attempted transfer. The default setting gives a 15-second window, though users can adjust this to 10, 30, or 60 seconds, or disable it entirely. According to Monzo’s data, simple mistakes such as typing errors, often involving an extra zero, were responsible for 68% of misdirected payments.
Albertsons is rolling out the TreviPay Pay by Invoice solution to enable business buyers to receive a dedicated 30-day line of credit
Albertsons is rolling out the TreviPay Pay by Invoice solution to enable business buyers, including small offices, K-12 schools, local government and community organizations and residential programs, to receive a dedicated line of credit for online grocery purchases with 30-day net terms. The Albertsons pay by invoice program includes a self-serve portal to assign spending limits to approved purchasers and real-time tracking of invoices, payments and credit lines. TreviPay’s invoicing program offers the control to customize purchasing hierarchies and the convenience of paying using credit lines, which we know are important to this buyer segment. Through the partnership, stores across Albertsons Cos. banners can automate their acounts receivable processes for business purchases with real-time credit decisioning, electronic invoice generation and payment tracking, with the goals of reducing billing errors and eliminating back-office resources. TreviPay settles funds right away and owns any buyer credit risk. Enabling Albertsons Cos.’ business customers to pay by invoice allows their corporate buyers to make large, repeat orders using their preferred payment method, while retailers eliminate the complexities of accounts receivables and fuel growth.
Mastercard and MoonPay team to promote stablecoin payments in an API-driven implementation letting businesses, neobanks, and other payment participants manage payouts and disbursements more efficiently
Mastercard has launched a stablecoin-focused partnership with cryptocurrency payments FinTech MoonPay. The collaboration will allow consumers and businesses to send and receive stablecoin payments across global markets. Companies and FinTechs will be able to employ Mastercard-branded cards linked to users’ stablecoin balances, allowing cardholders to spend their stablecoins, which will simultaneously be converted to fiat currency, at more than 150 million locations where Mastercard is accepted around the world. “By providing solutions that unlock stablecoin utility and ubiquity, we are redefining how money moves globally and driving a shift in payments as we know it,” Scott Abrahams, executive vice president, Global Partnerships at Mastercard, said. T he partnership will leverage the API-driven stablecoin infrastructure from Iron, acquired by MoonPay in March, to facilitate stablecoin transactions, turning “crypto wallets into new digital bank accounts for seamless global transactions.” This will let businesses, neobanks, and other payment participants manage payouts and disbursements more efficiently, improving cross-border money transfers, and help businesses offer stablecoin-based payouts to gig workers, contractors and creators.
BIS and NY Fed study says central banks could deploy smart contracts when commercial banks have widely adopted tokenisation for wholesale payments and securities settlement
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) have published a joint research study that explored how central banks could continue to implement monetary policy operations in tokenised wholesale financial markets. Dubbed Project Pine, the study found that central banks could deploy policy implementation tools using programmable smart contracts in a potential future state where commercial banks have widely adopted tokenisation for wholesale payments and securities settlement. The project generated the prototype of a generic monetary policy implementation tokenised toolkit for potential further research and development by central banks across jurisdictions and currencies. The BIS and the Fed say the prototype can fulfil a common set of central bank implementation requirements, including paying interest on reserves, open market operations, and collateral management. The toolkit was tested against ten hypothetical scenarios that applied historical data inputs on past market events, such as interest rate tightening and easing cycles, quantitative easing and tightening cycles, and periods of strained market liquidity or broader market disruptions. “The prototype successfully responded and instantaneously carried out the intended operation under the varying market conditions,” states the BIS. “Project Pine’s findings highlighted areas for further research and analysis related to interoperability and data standardisation.”