Equifax has launched its B2bConnect SMB data on the Equifax Cloud, making commercial marketing data available in minutes to help B2B marketers be more efficient and increase campaign success. The platform unifies differentiated data to create more effective commercial sales and marketing insights that enable Equifax customers to target the right small businesses quickly and achieve their goals. Using B2bConnect, B2B marketers can query more than 67 million U.S.-based business records online to help identify, segment and target top prospects. The platform enables user-friendly filtering and list-building features so that B2B marketers can reach target customers. B2bConnect offers everything marketing teams need within the platform, including demographics, business contacts, firmographics, marketability and industry codes, to give SMB marketers confidence that they are identifying and targeting the right business prospects. Equifax customers can also sort and filter companies and contacts based on the wide array of data points, quickly select the fields for export, and save templates for later use. This allows other team members to customize the file so that the data can be ingested into an existing CRM or marketing automation platform. From there, customers receive a flat file with their data that can come in Excel, CSV, Pipe Delimited or Tab Delimited formats.
ShopBack to launch in the US- the only cashback platform where users can earn real cashback on Amazon purchases whether on the ShopBack browser extension and/or mobile app
ShopBack, Asia-Pacific’s shopping and rewards platform with over 50 million users across 13 markets, announced its official launch in the United States with a slate of features and offers exclusive to the U.S., from over 2,000 merchants: Exclusive Cashback on Amazon — ShopBack is the only cashback platform where users can earn real cashback on Amazon purchases whether on the ShopBack browser extension and/or mobile app. ShopBack Play — ShopBack offers a gamified experience where shoppers can earn cashback by completing milestones and playing games within the app including Monopoly Go, Township, Block Blast and more. Shipping rebates on participating stores — In addition to earned cashback, ShopBack enables shoppers to receive money back on shipping fees, an added perk available only to U.S. users. Quests — ShopBack introduces an engaging way for users to earn additional cashback bonuses when they complete shopping quests, whilst allowing brands to connect directly with high-intent shoppers through customized rewards campaigns. Auto-applied coupons — ShopBack’s browser extension automatically finds and applies the best available promo codes at checkout — no manual searching required from users. Josephine Chow, head of expansion at ShopBack said “By combining cashback, deals, and gamified experiences, we’ve built a platform designed for today’s digitally-savvy consumer. In fact, new users who engage with Shopback’s ‘Quests’ globally each month go on to spend 80% more than average users – proof that saving money can be fun and rewarding for both users and partners.”
Virtuo to launch its AI-powered homeownership concierge platform that offers range of services from contract to move-in, including utility setup, address changes and home maintenance in Texas by partnering with builders
Virtuo, a company that offers an AI-powered homeownership concierge platform, is launching operations in Texas. The move marks Virtuo’s formal entry into the U.S. market, although the company has already assisted homebuyers in four states through partnerships with Canadian homebuilders. Virtuo will partner directly with builders in Dallas, Austin and Houston to provide technology and support services aimed at simplifying the homebuying process. The platform coordinates a range of services from contract to move-in, including utility setup, address changes and home maintenance. The expansion comes amid rapid population growth and new residential construction in Texas, where homebuilders are seeking digital tools to improve customer experience and stand out in a competitive market, company leaders said. “With Shane Homes opening our first showhome in the Dallas area this summer, the timing of Virtuo’s launch in Texas couldn’t be better,” said Melanie Gowans, vice president of sales, marketing and interior design at Shane Homes Group of Companies. Virtuo’s platform combines software with human assistance to help buyers manage their transition into homeownership. Its features include HomieAI, a generative AI tool available around the clock that provides personalized support from the time a home goes under contract to long after the move-in date. For builders, HomieAI also serves to reduce demand on customer care staff by offering consistent, automated assistance.
RegEd’s AI Advertising Review solution achieves >90% accuracy in identifying problematic content in advertising and marketing materials through continuous refinement driven by real-world uses across leading financial services firms and uses a closed-loop system to offer complete client data privacy
RegEd announced the release of Version 3.0 of the proprietary AI model that powers its Advertising Review solution. This marks a significant milestone in the evolution of RegEd’s Submission Intelligence suite of capabilities and underscores the company’s leadership in enterprise-grade, AI-enabled compliance technology. The AI 3.0 release achieves more than 90% accuracy in identifying problematic content in advertising and marketing materials, with continuous refinement driven by real-world use across dozens of leading financial services firms. Developed within a closed-loop system, RegEd’s AI ensures complete client data privacy. The model is governed, trained, and deployed exclusively within RegEd’s secure infrastructure, avoiding the security and privacy risks associated with third-party models, or those that are externally trained or managed. Key Enhancements in Version 3.0: Improved Accuracy, Client-Calibrated Tuning, Consistency Across Review Teams. In addition to the enhancements in Version 3.0, RegEd will introduce AI-assisted pre-review later this year. This next-phase capability will enable firms to screen materials for compliance issues before human review, further accelerating review cycles and improving speed to market.
Nintendo’s second store to offer guests an “immersive shopping experience”, photo opportunities and feature demo stations, giant gaming screen and multi-character artwork products including statue replicas, stationery items and bags
Nintendo has opened its second store in the United States – two decades after making its debut. The San Francisco Union Square location offers guests an “immersive shopping experience” for all ages, where they can browse exclusive products including accessories, apparel and home goods. The San Francisco store offers plenty of photo opportunities, including with “larger-than-life statues” of Nintendo characters from franchises such as Super Mario, Splatoon, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon and more. In addition, the store boasts several interactive features, including demo stations where visitors can play their favorite games on the Nintendo Switch system or discover new ones. Visitors also have an opportunity to play on a giant gaming screen located on the lower level, which will also be used to air future Nintendo Direct livestreams. Highlights of the new store include the following: 1) The merchandise assortment includes special multi-character artwork products including statue replicas, stationery items and bags, as well as exclusive Nintendo San Francisco-branded apparel. 2) The hardware customization kiosk display lets customers create their very own customized Nintendo Switch – OLED Model system. They can choose from different Joy-Con, wrist strap and dock colors for a customized system that will be ready for them to take home the same day. 3) Visitors can check in at the My Nintendo kiosk with their Nintendo Account information to get an exclusive sticker for visiting Nintendo San Francisco, plus 50 My Nintendo Platinum Points.
Supermicro’s data center solution enables deploying liquid-cooled AI infrastructure in three months with 20% lower TCO offering packages of pre-validated floor plans, rack elevations and bill of materials
Supermicro introduced its Data Center Building Block Solutions, designed to simplify the deployment of liquid-cooled AI infrastructure. The offering includes servers, storage, networking, racks, liquid cooling systems, software, services, and support. As an expansion of Supermicro’s System Building Block Solutions, DCBBS adopts a standardized, yet flexible solution architecture, vastly expanded in scope to handle the most demanding AI data center training and inference workloads, enabling easier data center planning, buildout, and operation – all while reducing cost. “Supermicro’s DCBBS enables clients to easily construct data center infrastructure with the fastest time-to-market and time-to-online advantage, deploying as quickly as three months,” said Charles Liang, president and CEO of Supermicro. “With our total solution coverage, including designing data center layouts and network topologies, power and battery backup-units, DCBBS simplifies and accelerates AI data center buildouts leading to reduced costs and improved quality.” DCBBS offers packages of pre-validated data center-level scalable units, including a 256-node AI Factory DCBBS scalable unit, designed to alleviate the burden of prolonged data center design by providing a streamlined package of floor plans, rack elevations, bill of materials, and more. Supermicro provides comprehensive first-party services to ensure project success, starting from consultation to on-site deployment and continued on-site support. DCBBS is customizable at the system-level, rack cluster-level, and data center-level to meet virtually any project requirements. Along with DLC-2 technology, DCBBS also helps customers save up to 40% power, reducing 60% data center footprint, and decreasing 40% water consumption, all of which leads to 20% lower TCO. Solutions from Supermicro include up to 256 Liquid Cooled 4U Supermicro NVIDIA HGX system nodes, each system equipped with 8 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs (2,048 GPUs in total), interconnected with up to 800Gb/s NVIDIA Quantum-X800 InfiniBand or NVIDIA Spectrum X Ethernet networking platform. The compute fabric is supported by elastically scalable tiered storage with high-performance PCIe Gen5 NVMe, TCO optimized Data Lake nodes, and resilient management system nodes for continuous uninterrupted operation.
Frontegg’s end-to-end CIAM solution for agentic AI auto-generates the authentication code for both web and mobile apps; handles the creation, refreshing, and deletion of all OAuth access tokens; and creates visualizations from source data
With enterprise agentic automation fast becoming a reality, CIAM providers are racing to address the unique requirements posed by autonomous AI agents. To authenticate and interact with a third-party B2B application on behalf of a human user, AI agents need programmatic and persistent access, typically requiring token-based authentication and complex OAuth flows. Frontegg’s recently released Frontegg.ai takes an end-to-end approach, delivering out-of-the-box solutions for advanced use cases that require the integration of multiple B2B applications. The AI agent and all required third-party integrations can be created and configured in the Frontegg.ai dashboard in just a few minutes. The code for the authentication interface is automatically generated for both web and mobile applications and the platform handles the creation, refreshing, and deletion of all OAuth access tokens. This end-to-end authentication and authorization functionality can be integrated into the agent code with just a few lines. One of the innovative products being developed using Frontegg.ai is an analytics support agent that intelligently creates visualizations from source data, based on the requirements of different business personas and communicates them on a regular basis. The idea is that rather than manually visiting a portal to configure dashboards, users will interact with the AI agent outside of the portal as an intelligent analytics assistant. Some of the CIAM providers that support identity and access management for AI agents include: 1) Auth0’s Auth for gen AI enables multiple accounts for third-party applications to be linked into a single, unified profile. Users only need to authenticate once to authorize an AI agent to interact with all of the connected applications connected to their accounts.
Au10tix’s API for real-time AML risk monitoring dynamically adjusts the intensity of screening processes through proactive scanning of over 100 global sanctions lists, PEP databases, and adverse media
AU10TIX has launched continuous risk monitoring as part of its advanced AML solution. Driven by customer demand, this powerful capability delivers real-time risk insights across the full customer lifecycle—empowering businesses to detect behavioral anomalies and emerging threats as they arise. AU10TIX’s continuous monitoring capability proactively scans top data sources including global sanctions lists, politically exposed person (PEP) databases, and adverse media in real time to detect anomalies as they emerge. The system dynamically adjusts screening intensity based on customer risk profiles and business requirements—supporting KYC and KYB processes while ensuring adherence to evolving global regulations. AU10TIX’s AML solution features a proprietary decision-making mechanism, customizable workflows, and a user-friendly dashboard to streamline risk management and due diligence processes. The new capability provides: Real-time fraud and money laundering alerts; Adaptive risk scoring, continuously recalibrated based on real-time data and changing user behavior; Flexible thresholding tailored to customer risk levels; Coverage across 240+ countries and 1,600 government sites; A unified dashboard for identity verification and AML results; and Seamless KYC + KYB support in a single compliance flow
Google Wallet is now requiring ‘verify’ authentication to even open the app
For the past year or so, opening Google Wallet 3+ minutes after unlocking your phone would result in a “For your security, you need to verify it’s you before paying” message appearing at the top of the app. As such, three minutes from unlock, tap-to-pay transactions don’t work until PIN, pattern, password, fingerprint, face (Class 3 biometric unlock), etc. Recently, Google Wallet has changed or is in the process of testing a new behavior. Now, after three minutes, you cannot even access the app’s homepage with your carousel of cards and list of passes without authentication. Google throws up a splash screen with the Wallet logo up top and system-level “Verify it’s you” sheet to authenticate. Sometimes, we still see the old card prompt at the top instead of the new fullscreen version, but the latter is beginning to appear more frequently. We’re seeing this change with version 25.18 of Google Wallet on both Pixel and Samsung phones. This is quite a security escalation. As our digital wallets contain more and more (including state IDs, passports, home/room and car keys, boarding passes, medical information, etc.), you might not want people with your phone to even know what’s being stored.
Capital One closes Discover acquisition with stipulations to address Discover’s outstanding enforcement actions; will reportedly pay $425 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of cheating savings account depositors
Armed with Discover’s payments network, which competes with those of Visa Inc. and Mastercard Inc., Capital One is poised to capture an even greater share of spending on credit and debit cards that Americans so heavily rely upon. “We are well-positioned to continue our quest to change banking for good for millions of customers,” Capital One Chief Executive Officer Richard Fairbank said. The acquisition wasn’t assured, given the last presidential administration’s skepticism of mergers — and especially those involving finance firms. Bank dealmaking activity was stunted during Joe Biden’s presidency, and some Congressional Democrats opposed the Capital One takeover of Discover, saying it may harm consumers and put the stability of the US financial system at risk. With Donald Trump now in the Oval Office, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency approved the deal last month after the US Department of Justice decided not to challenge it. But the approval came with stipulations: the OCC mandated that Capital One outline the corrective actions it planned to take to address Discover’s outstanding enforcement actions. In 2023, the firm disclosed that, starting in 2007, it had been charging merchants more than it should have to accept payments on certain credit cards. In connection with the acquisition, Capital One is expanding its board of directors to 15 members from 12. Capital One and Discover customer accounts and banking relationships remain unchanged for now, and information in advance of any forthcoming changes will be provided, according to the statement.