It’s the end of a busy week, one full of news about payments and commerce. We here at PYMNTS are as excited about the weekend as you are, but before our thoughts turn to leisure, we want to make sure you are up-to-date on all that happened this week, and that you didn’t miss anything important. Here are some of the vital stories we have covered since Sunday.
Alexa’s Doctor Dreams
Amazon’s latest move to become a major player in healthcare involves its voice-activated digital assistant. Alexa is now HIPAA-compliant. Not only that, but five healthcare companies have created new Alexa skills, enabling Alexa to make appointments at urgent care facilities, track prescription drug shipments and provide doctors with information once a patient is released from the hospital.
Retailers Go Mobile to Get Contactless
With the use of contactless payments heating up around the world, small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and their solution providers have to prepare for their acceptance – and that means mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) terminals.
Stolen Fingerprints Get Their Own Marketplace
Security researchers at Kaspersky Lab revealed at the Kaspersky Security Analyst Summit in Singapore that a dark net marketplace has emerged, in which hackers are selling digital fingerprints for anywhere from $5 to $200.
New Scam Targets Direct Deposit
KVC Health Systems, a child welfare nonprofit based out of Kansas City, has been hit with an email scam. The emails look legitimate, and purportedly come from the company’s CEO, CFO or payroll director.
Card Replacement: Moment of Truth for Banks
That friction-filled interlude is more than just a hassle for consumers; it can be a liability for financial institutions. That moment of truth, according to a PYMNTS interview, is when a customer realizes his or her card is lost or compromised, and can determine the future of the consumer-issuer relationship.
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A Closer Look at Mobile Banking, After 10 Years
With more consumers than ever interested in fulfilling all their financial needs on mobile, legacy banks and FinTech firms alike are focusing on creating digital-only banking services, designed to catch customers and keep them using their smartphones for banking. A new PYMNTS research report dives deep and examines Chase’s approach.
Girls Scouts Sweeten Cookie Sales With mPOS
As the use of contactless payments heats up worldwide, retailers are looking to their mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) providers to help them prepare. Meeting this need can be tricky. PYMNTS chews into the issue, and tells the story of how even the Girl Scouts are facing pressure to become more payment tech-savvy.
Can High-End Wedding Retail Make the Switch to Digital?
Stroll along certain streets in New Orleans (site of the PYMNTS bureau of slow and lost time), and you’ll come across one: a full-service, high-end bridal and wedding boutique. But as one of the nation’s biggest luxury wedding retailers shuts down, what’s next for these merchants?
Solving the Subscription Movie Formula
While MoviePass has attracted a lot of press in the last year with its dramatic swings, it isn’t the only player in the movie theater subscription line that is struggling.
IKEA’s New Planning Studio in NYC
The 17,000-square-foot store, located in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, is about one-twentieth the size of the average IKEA location. In fact, this store is geared more for customers who are looking to design a small apartment than an entire home, with the retailer hoping to attract clients who can afford to own their own apartments in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
