PYMNTS

💡 The Number is 28.5% That's how many U.S. workers that say they're at least somewhat likely to lose their job, and it's the highest number yet in 13 months of tracking. On this episode of The Number, analyst Matt Albrecht reveals key data points the latest PYMNTS Consumer Expectation Index, such as: 👀 21% of consumers who live paycheck to paycheck comfortably paid down debt faster or avoided new debt because of job or income worries. One number. The story behind it. Tune in to find out What’s Next.

💳 Kipp was acquired by an investor group led by The Lifetime Value Company and is pushing into the US, where merchants pay a premium to recover transactions issuers would otherwise decline. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CLTJg0

The final human approval at a bank could eventually disappear, just not yet. Matt Pearce, vice president of fraud risk management and dispute operations at @i2cinc, told PYMNTS he expects people to stay involved in high-stakes exceptions for at least the next three to five years, especially in fraud, compliance, credit risk and disputes. Watch the full interview to find out what has to change before banks remove that final approval. hubs.ly/Q04CLRzg0

Payments leaders, map your systems before you replace a single component. Taranjit Singh, senior vice president and Technical Fellow for Corporate Payments at @WEXIncNews, favors continuous modernization over replacement projects that can take years. “You cannot modernize a system which you haven’t thoroughly mapped,” he told PYMNTS. Watch the full interview to find out what to examine behind an API before trusting it to move money. hubs.ly/Q04CLMWW0

Merchant underwriters are headed for fewer files and tougher calls. Bill Christensen, senior vice president of risk and underwriting at Maverick Payments, told PYMNTS the company already uses AI to auto-board low-risk accounts with predictable profiles. Its underwriters focus on higher-risk cases and true exceptions. Watch the full interview to find out what automated systems must prove before they earn more approval authority. hubs.ly/Q04CLLpQ0

⚖️ The Justice Department is asking whether Nvidia’s $12.93 billion purchase of Hugging Face would give it control of a foundational distribution point for AI. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CH6Zj0

Your bank knows your voice, your face and the way you type. AI can now fake all three. That puts issuers in a tough spot, because the checks they trusted most are the ones failing first. Read When Fraud Becomes the Customer, from PYMNTS Intelligence and @Paymentology, to see how issuers can build trust that keeps verifying, so real customers move freely and impostors stand out. hubs.ly/Q04CFSW40

📈 PayPal reports 25% BNPL payment volume increase. Full details on PYMNTS: hubs.ly/Q04CCxrQ0

Ninety-five percent of firms expect a payment guarantee to help their business, and none expect it to hurt. Just 13% actually use one. Integration concerns, guarantee fees and unclear ROI top the list of hurdles, according to new PYMNTS Intelligence research in collaboration with @Plaid. Find out which firms are most likely to adopt payment guarantees within the next two years. hubs.ly/Q04CBdL70

🔓 Coinbase says a security incident at analytics vendor Amplitude exposed a small subset of customer contact data. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CBHdp0

We asked 11 payments leaders which belief 2026 changed for them. 🧠 Answers came from... PayPal’s Shaun Khalfan Bottomline’s Jeff Feuerstein Boost Payment Solutions’ Dean M. Leavitt i2c’s Pam Guinn Flagright’s Madhu Nadig Billtrust’s David Zwick Tungsten Automation’s John Gibbon Paysafe’s Ali Wilkes Synchrony’s Beto Casellas Thales’ Romain Soulard Velera’s Scott P. Young. Find out what changed their minds and what’s next for Q4. hubs.ly/Q04CBb3L0

🎯 @Stripe Pay targets instant B2B payments. Here's what we know right now: hubs.ly/Q04Czw_Z0

💰 Nvidia is putting $3 billion into Meta’s equity offering and expanding its partnership on the Muse model family, focused on inference and training performance. More on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04Cw75f0

We dug into how small businesses are using AI to grow. One finding stood out. 🔎 Nearly a quarter of SMBs, 23%, gained customers who specifically wanted human-delivered work. Another 14% picked up business fixing AI-generated output, and 21% emphasize human involvement as a selling point or plan to. Find out how small businesses are turning human expertise into a competitive edge as AI absorbs more routine work. hubs.ly/Q04CsBC-0

🏦 @Ripple gets OCC’s OK for its national bank charter. More details from their CEO @bgarlinghouse : hubs.ly/Q04Cv27M0 #Ripple #XRP #RLUSD

🛒 DoorDash is in advanced talks to buy Instacart for about $17 billion, a deal that could land within days. Instacart’s talks with Uber have ended. More on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CsBMy0

The rules engine running your AP workflow may be on its way out. Emily Nash-Walker, senior director of product strategy at Tungsten Automation, told PYMNTS she expects a shift to agents that are auditable and traceable. If one of 50 states changes a requirement, an agent could adjust without developers rewriting a larger set of rules. Watch the full interview to hear how agents can take on that work without losing the audit trail. hubs.ly/Q04Csygh0

Fraudsters can change an attack faster than a bank can rewrite a fraud rule. Paul Chang, @awscloud Head of Payment Networks, told PYMNTS they’re using “commoditized SaaS toolkits sold on dark web marketplaces” to run scams, card testing and synthetic identity fraud at industry scale. Find out how banks are pairing transaction foundation models with graph neural networks to catch the patterns those attacks leave behind. hubs.ly/Q04CsrBv0

Ask shoppers why they picked a store, and only 1% to 2% will name payment options as the main reason. Ask whether those options influenced or decided where they bought, and 29% of grocery shoppers say yes. Among millennials, it’s 41%. Find out what shoppers want most at checkout, and which generation is chasing cash back and discounts, in the latest PYMNTS Intelligence report. hubs.ly/Q04CsmMY0

.@Ripple adds 24/7 stablecoin returns to treasury platform. Full story on PYMNTS: hubs.ly/Q04Cs1ll0 #Ripple #XRP #XRPL

🎙️ Block released Dessa, a voice AI it says was trained only on human speech, and the demo split social media between people impressed by how human it sounds and people worried about scam calls. Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CmrtC0