ASAPP Financial Technology has announced the availability of the bank.io OXP® | Omnichannel Experience Platform Version 1 for the U.S. market. Version 1 of bank.io OXP® combines retail account and member origination, unsecured retail lending origination, CRM, ECM, and data warehouse / opportunity analysis feature sets and capabilities into a single, platform-based experience designed to streamline operations, enhance member engagement, and enable data-driven growth. Version 1 of bank.io OXP® provides: • End-to-end origination flows for deposit accounts and unsecured lending products, including loans and lines of credit. • The Platform supports multi-product applications, as well as new member onboarding, KYC, and AML requirements within a single, integrated process.
• The Platform supports both new and existing member applications, ensuring frictionless onboarding and faster decisioning. • bank.io OXP contains multilingual content management support allowing credit unions to deliver origination journeys for new and existing members in their language of preference. • Custom promotional pages allow external digital / mobile ads, social media campaigns, emails, and credit union website links to land on separate branded pages for each product or product combination, driving visual and U/X consistency and higher application completion rates. • Integrated Docusign e-signature capabilities enable any editable pdf to be labeled within the Platform and documents to be completed and signed digitally. • Deep core-banking integration minimizes data re-entry and allows direct account provisioning. A centralized member-dashboard lets members track application status and open additional accounts quickly and easily. • The bank.io OXP Opportunity Engine aggregates data from core banking data extracts, platform application history (account and lending origination), and member engagement interactions to drive proactive, data-informed outreach. • Financial institutions can identify and target member segments using over 150 member and product-level attributes. •The Opportunity Engine supports growth strategies such as renewals, next-best-product recommendations, and product up-selling opportunities. • It also enables early concern management by identifying late payments or delinquencies and prompting timely member engagement. •The Platform’s experience tracking features help institutions schedule proactive outreach and maintain consistent member touchpoints.
Apple News+ interactive game challenges users to guess movie titles, popular phrases, or news headlines using emojis as clues
Apple News+ has introduced the ‘Emoji Game’, an interactive game designed to entertain users while they read news. The game challenges users to guess movie titles, popular phrases, or news headlines using emojis as clues. The casual and fun game enhances user retention and encourages subscribers to spend more time within the app. Apple News+ aims to differentiate itself by blending informative content with interactive features, aligning with its strategy to make news consumption more dynamic, personalized, and enjoyable. The game appeals to a broad audience, including news junkies and casual users who appreciate gamified content. Since its launch, the game has garnered positive reactions from subscribers, with social media buzz indicating growing enthusiasm for the feature. Apple plans to expand the game’s content themes and introduce new challenges, seasonal puzzles, and reward systems to maintain subscriber interest.
Gemini drag handle overlay brings back shortcut to open full app on Android
After removing earlier this year, the Gemini overlay on Android is bringing back a shortcut to quickly open the full app. It takes the form of a drag handle at the top of the Gemini overlay. Just swipe up and let go to open the Gemini app for chat history, Gems, and settings. The full prompt bar lets you access the Video, Deep Research, and Canvas chips. The ‘plus’ menu is the same, though the design differs. (Last week, Gemini on the web gained an “Image: Generate with Imagen” chip. It’s not available on mobile yet.) Google last updated the overlay in January, with the previous design being taller. This shortcut saves you from having to place the app icon on your homescreen. This overlay shortcut to access the full Gemini app is widely rolling out with version 16.27 (stable) and 16.28 (beta) of the Google app. Force stop if you’re not seeing it yet. It follows the Gemini overlay going right-aligned on tablets and foldables with the launch of Samsung’s latest devices. Meanwhile, we’re still waiting for Google to widely roll out the four-color glow.
Kantar launches ExperienceEvaluator to help brands fast-track CX improvements using direct customer feedback from Kantar’s high-quality, privacy-compliant consumer access panels
Kantar, a marketing data and analytics company, has launched ExperienceEvaluator, a cost-effective Customer Experience (CX) solution that enables brands to benchmark and optimize customer experiences, accelerate business growth, and ultimately win against competition. The solution delivers results in as few as four days, allowing CX teams to quickly evaluate how audiences react, engage, and connect with brands. It uses direct customer feedback from Kantar’s high-quality, privacy-compliant consumer access panels, allowing clients to analyze what is influencing people’s experiences, pinpoint areas for improvement, and prioritize next steps based on data-driven insights. ExperienceEvaluator is available on Kantar Marketplace, Kantar’s agile market research platform, making it easier and more cost-effective for CX teams to continuously refine and enhance their offerings in response to customer feedback. Kantar’s proprietary Meaningfully Different Experiences (MDX) methodology links strong consumer experience to measurable business outcomes such as increased market share, reduced churn, higher pricing power, and stronger customer retention.
Bloomreach personalization platform offers native Snowflake integration to securely sync customer attributes, event data, and product catalogs
Bloomreach, the agentic platform for personalization, announced a new partnership with the Snowflake AI Data Cloud, empowering businesses to activate enterprise-grade data infrastructures across marketing channels. With Bloomreach and Snowflake, businesses can combine customer engagement with maximum personalization, connecting customer data stored in Snowflake with Bloomreach’s AI-powered marketing solutions. Bloomreach’s native Snowflake integration is already available to businesses today. It securely syncs customer attributes, event data, and product catalogs from Snowflake into Bloomreach. Businesses unlock the full value of their customer data, breaking down silos between storage and activation, and enabling personalization powered by AI. Additionally, this integration enables marketing teams to: Power Loomi AI agents in Bloomreach with enriched customer and product intelligence; Automate campaign triggers based on Snowflake events; Deliver timely personalization with fresh data and hyper-relevant insights; Safeguard sensitive data through selective import capabilities, transferring only the specific data required for a given use case.
Meta is developing a wristband that lets people control a computer using hand gestures that includes moving a cursor, opening apps, and sending messages by writing in the air as if using a pencil
Meta researchers are developing a wristband that lets people control a computer using hand gestures. This includes moving a cursor, opening apps, and sending messages by writing in the air as if using a pencil. Meta’s wristband employs a technique called surface electromyography (sEMG), which detects electrical signals generated by muscle activity to interpret user movements, as explained in a research paper published in the journal Nature. These signals can sense a person’s intended actions, even before they do them. The goal of this wristband is to provide less invasive tools to interact with computers for people with motor disabilities. The company is collaborating with Carnegie Mellon to test the wristband with people who have spinal cord injuries, enabling them to use computers even if they are unable to fully use their arms or hands. Douglas Weber, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Neuroscience Institute, noted that even people with complete hand paralysis still exhibit some muscle activity. As a result, the device is able to interpret their intended actions. The wristband is a simpler alternative to other invasive projects such as Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Meta’s wristband could be used immediately without surgical intervention, and its use of sEMG signals means it operates at a higher frequency than EEG.
Pulsate’s mobile-first engagement platform taps customer intent signals to enable community banks recognize and act on customer micro-engagements through delivering highly personalized, differentiated and contextual offers directly within existing banking platforms
Sarah Martin is CEO at Pulsate, a mobile-first, personalized consumer engagement platform tapped largely by community banks and credit unions. Pulsate’s data, for instance, capitalizes on banking customer intent signals to recommend next-best products that convert interest into action. Martin says to compete in a widening financial services market, institutions of any size must believe they too can attract and retain customers, drive deposit growth and loan balances, as well as react to dynamic market fluctuations just like their neobank competition, money centers and others. Regional banks, community banks, credit unions and banks of all sizes can expand their approach and smartly use the resources they have by thinking as their customers do. Yes, data and technology are key, she says, but institutions should strategize how they can best leverage in-house capabilities, often with partnerships. She says the design of her platform targets a specific goal, however, one she believes too many financial institutions take for granted: recognizing and acting on customer micro-engagements. Finding value not just in product, but in service, in overall experience, in empathy, in message, in brand, in differentiation, in delivering highly personalized, contextual offers and communications directly within a bank or credit union’s existing mobile and digital banking platforms is what Martin has found can effectively transform a mediocre or even satisfactory digital or mobile banking channel into a comprehensive profit center. Every encounter is an opportunity. Feedback is data and data informs what can happen next.
Adobe Photoshop’s new AI tools let users increase resolution up to 8 megapixels without major quality loss, group and share files within a centralized workspace and help blend added elements into a composition by auto-adjusting lighting, color, and shadows to match the surrounding scene
Adobe is bringing more AI-powered image-editing and enhancement features to Photoshop using its Firefly models. The company is rolling out an image-upscaling feature, an object blending, and an upgraded object remover to Photoshop. The Generative Upscale feature will enhance an image up to 8 megapixels. This is useful for restoring details to old photos, upscaling images for prints, or adopting assets for various platforms. Adobe is rolling out this feature under the Harmonize moniker, letting you place an object in a scene, remove its background, and have Photoshop use Firefly models to adjust color, lighting, shadows, and visual tones to fit the object in the scene. The company is also rolling out an improved object-removal tool. Previously, when you used generative fill to remove the object, the tool considered the whole scene to fill in the gap of the removed object and at times, that resulted in unwanted artifacts in the image. The company has reworked the algorithm to have it focus on just removing the object and filling the gap with the background. Adobe is also adding a few small features to Photoshop, including a better way to manage putting assets in a shared and organized space. Plus, the company lets you choose the version of the Firefly model you want to choose while using AI features.
Google Wallet’s instant card carousel overlays on Pixel’s power button double-tap, enabling NFC tap-to-pay and quick card switching without leaving your current screen
Pixel phones are getting a new card carousel overlay when you launch Google Wallet with a double-tap of the power button. Android 16 introduced the ability to customize the “Double press power button” gesture. Instead of launching the camera, you can set it to open Google Wallet. At the moment, this just opens the full Wallet app. At least one Android 16 Pixel 9 Pro Fold user is now seeing a new overlay that opens above your current screen. Featuring a blurred background, there’s a “Hold to reader” NFC animation followed by just a card carousel. At the bottom, you get an “Open Wallet” shortcut. This is pretty convenient when you don’t want to pay with your default card. This new overlay lets you quickly return to what you were previously doing after the payment is complete. We’re not seeing this Google Wallet overlay yet on Pixel devices we checked today. It’s rolling out with version 25.31 of Google Wallet and Play services (beta). This is somewhat reminiscent of the Android 12 overlay after Google dropped the combined power, card/passes, and smart home controls menu.
Google Wallet revamps tap-to-pay animation with Material 3 Expressive UX design: translucent backgrounds, dynamic card movement, NFC waves, and elaborate success visuals
Google Wallet’s NFC tap-to-pay animation is getting a M3 Expressive redesign. Instead of your card getting displayed against a solid color, the background is now translucent. (In the new example below, you can make out the apps in the dock.) The “Open Wallet” button at the bottom is placed in a pill for a large touch target. The card jumps up before resting back down in line with the new success animation that is quite elaborate. The NFC waves briefly appear before being replaced by a scalloped Material 3 shape. There’s a white loading indicator within the blue container that becomes the checkmark. A blue wave emanating from the check completes things. The seasonal success animations presumably still exist and have been updated to fit the new design. This animation redesign is not yet widely rolled out, with the M3 Expressive revamp of the Google Wallet homepage still seeing limited availability. At the same time, Pixel users that launch Wallet by double-tapping the power button are getting a new overlay.