PYMNTS

Your payments got faster. Did your fraud detection? Instant bank payments have become a core part of how businesses pay out claims, collect loan payments and fund customer accounts. That speed is great for customers, but it leaves fraud teams very little time to act. The check has to happen before the money moves, not after. Join PYMNTS’ John Gaffney with Brian Dammeir of @Plaid, Stephen Sikes of Public and John Lynch of Avant on November 18 at 12 PM ET. They’ll cover how leading companies keep bank payments fast and simple while keeping return risk in check. Save your spot. hubs.ly/Q04Dt4l00

💰 OpenAI’s revenue climbed about 50% to $10 billion in the third quarter while operating losses grew to $10.9 billion. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04F2ldK0

📉 @FICO_Corp declined to give fiscal 2027 guidance as it moves off flat-fee mortgage score pricing and faces new competition from VantageScore in government-backed lending. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04F2ldv0

Every bill gets paid. On paper, these households look fine. But they live paycheck to paycheck, and they make up 41% of U.S. adults. When money gets tighter, they’re nearly as quick to cut subscriptions as consumers struggling to pay bills. 57% of those who see subscriptions as optional would cut them early, 18 points more than consumers not living paycheck to paycheck. For retailers, the squeeze reaches well beyond the households already falling behind. See what these shoppers would cut first, and what they’d protect, in the latest PYMNTS Intelligence report. hubs.ly/Q04D_bw40

⏱️ QUICK TAKES: Picture a Canadian small business owner getting paid at midnight on a Sunday. Canada just built a national rail for exactly that. The Real-Time Rail launched Nov. 9 with mandatory centralized fraud services from day one, a first for a G7 country, according to Payments Canada. @TCHtweets SVP Jim Colassano is cheering on “our neighbors to the north” and sees 24/7 instant payments as the future for businesses and consumers. Read how Canada built fraud defenses in before the first payment cleared. hubs.ly/Q04F0d380

In January, the headlines kept coming. AI would replace software. Expertise would matter less. Bottomline SVP of Product Management Jeff Feuerstein was convinced a “SaaSpocalypse” was coming. Then he kept talking to customers. They weren’t asking who had the newest model. They wanted to know who understood their business best. “Artificial intelligence lowers the cost of creating technology, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for knowledge, experience or trust,” he writes in a new PYMNTS eBook. Find out how @bottomlinepay is pairing AI with the payments expertise its customers count on. hubs.ly/Q04D_7qK0

🤝 @Fiserv's Clover now connects the small business store counter to the AI shopping search. Get the full story on PYMNTS: hubs.ly/Q04D_tyJ0

Most of the debate over medical AI asks whether an algorithm can match a doctor. In a lot of places, there’s no doctor to match. 👩‍⚕️ “A lot of these communities don’t have a care provider,” Dr. Rowland Illing, global chief medical officer and director of healthcare & life sciences at AWS, told PYMNTS. Amazon Web Services is putting $100 million over five years into AI, agentic services and cloud infrastructure to help the providers who are there reach more people. See how @awscloud plans to move healthcare AI out of the pilot phase and into real clinics. hubs.ly/Q04D_2M60

The cart is full. The credit decision is pending. The clock is running. 59% of consumers would wait no more than an hour before the delay affects whether they finish the purchase. An AI agent could fill in the application and speed things up. Yet only 49% of consumers would let one submit it, even with their final go-ahead. And 79% say it’s very important or essential that the agent explain its choice in plain language. See what consumers need before they’ll let an agent hit submit in “Giving AI Credit” from PYMNTS Intelligence and @HelloThredd. hubs.ly/Q04D-YXC0

The embedded payments feature worked. Better than anyone expected. Then the costs started climbing too. Every new payment method, banking partner or market can bring another integration, another exception process and another compliance requirement. A program held together by custom integrations and manual workarounds gets expensive to run, even as transactions grow. Find out how to build embedded payments that can scale without starting over in the latest PYMNTS Intelligence report with @WEXIncNews. hubs.ly/Q04DThxm0

💸 @bottomlinepay completed its first live cross-border stablecoin payments through its Global Payments Hub, using Circle’s USDC on an intra-company transfer. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04DTBMC0

Answering customers faster only gets you so far. “Customers today expect immediacy,” @Paysafe Chief Customer Officer Ali Wilkes writes in a new PYMNTS eBook. Her focus now is removing the reasons they need help. Find out how Paysafe is building journeys that answer customers before they have to ask. hubs.ly/Q04DT0kD0

💼 Sage is bringing banking, payments and reconciliation into its accounting software, with @Mastercard as card network partner and @Adyen providing the banking-as-a-service rails, starting in France. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04DTh3j0

For two years, PYMNTS has tracked CFOs on a mission to get cash moving faster. Most of them pulled it off. 87% say their cash flow cycle improved, up from 71% the year before. AI got a seat at the table and started shaping where the money goes. Then the music changed. Customers and suppliers started pushing back, and fraud showed up right on cue. Faster cash, it turns out, needs a bigger bodyguard. Read the Time to Cash™ report from PYMNTS Intelligence and @jpmorgan to see where CFOs can find their next gains. hubs.ly/Q04DTmZr0

“You were one of the first to issue your own stablecoin. How’s that going?” That’s one of the questions PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster posed to @PayPal President & CEO Enrique Lores during their conversation at @Money2020. Follow PYMNTS to hear more from Webster & Lores on the future of payments. #Money2020

Banks, stop treating a passed authentication check as proof a payment is safe. “It doesn’t matter how sophisticated your authentication protocol is, if it’s actually me [the legitimate customer] who’s trying to initiate the payment,” @Paymentology CPO Stephen Bowe told PYMNTS. Watch the full interview to find out what else banks should be checking. hubs.ly/Q04DS_gm0

Buying AI tools is the easy part. Changing how a business works is not. On the latest episode of Fired Up with Paulette Rowe, Mark Sundt stops by the PYMNTS Business News Network to discuss why AI transformation is a leadership challenge, built on agency, trust, culture and a deep understanding of the customer. So how do culture and leadership shape performance in the era of AI? Subscribe now to find out:  🎧 Apple Podcasts: hubs.ly/Q04DSXRy0 🎧 Spotify: hubs.ly/Q04DSXRz0

It’s the last week of the month. A bakery owner stares at an invoice she can’t cover, and reaches for the business credit card. Across town, a contractor reaches for the same card. He’s buying the equipment that will grow his business. Same card. Very different stakes. 💳 Among the smallest borrowers, 48% used credit mainly to cover expenses they otherwise couldn’t pay. Among the largest, 55% borrowed mainly to manage or grow their business. See who gets room to breathe, and who gets room to grow, in “Borrowing Room” from PYMNTS Intelligence. hubs.ly/Q04DS-jF0

🇩🇪 @Affirm is buying Ratepay to grow its footprint in German-speaking Europe, with the deal expected to close in the first half of next year. Nexi CEO Bernardo Mingrone says the divestment keeps the company focused on core activities and a tighter portfolio. Read the full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04DQtzw0

🔍 Nvidia’s board is reviewing reports that CEO Jensen Huang was a Chinese intelligence target, after he acknowledged a relationship with an executive US officials say shared information with Beijing. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04DPXT90

🏛️ House Democrats are reportedly planning to expand Rep. Maxine Waters’ Crypto Investor Consumer Bill of Rights into a full market structure bill that strengthens the SEC and limits the CFTC. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04DPYHk0