Payments platform Klarna AB announced a series of new services, including Shopping lens, which enables shoppers to take a picture of an item in their surroundings to find out where to buy it on the best terms. The service uses artificial intelligence to render the item in a search term. Technology consultancy Thoughtworks said …

Location-technology vendor Mapbox launched MapGPT, an automobile-based voice assistant incorporating generative artificial intelligence. Among its features is an ability to process payments, starting in Japan with that country’s PayPay app. Stop & Shop and Food Lion have adopted a mobile shopping app from Peapod Digital Labs, an e-commerce technology developer for Ahold Delhaize …

The Fed’s new real-time payments platform will pose challenges for risk management. Here’s how to cope with that. The U.S. Federal Reserve made its FedNow instant-payments service live in July. It enables a faster flow of cash for companies and individuals, improving the overall flow of money through the U.S. …

Juliet Capulet sent me an e-mail recently to offer me a marketing list for a conference that has nothing to do with payments. I’m no gentleman of Verona, but I definitely recognize the Capulet name. However, I don’t think Juliet is real. The e-mail’s stilted wording, the mismatch of the …

The world of global payments is undergoing major changes as new technologies and players enter the payment space. While banks and financial institutions have historically dominated international payments, we are seeing new innovations and non-traditional competitors redefine how money moves across the globe. In recent years, the entire payments chain …

Unceasing competition for restaurant payments revenue has spurred two developments among point-of-sale system makers catering to the segment. Santa Clara, Calif.-based SoundHound AI Inc. says Olo, a New York City-based hospitality specialist, will make SoundHound’s voice-ordering service, which relies on artificial intelligence, available to its approximately 77,000 merchant locations. When …

Citcon USA LLC, an e-commerce wallet-technology provider, is adding Block Inc.’s Cash App Pay and Afterpay buy now, pay later payment methods to its inventory of merchant options. In related news, Block’s Square point-of-sale unit is bolstering merchant selling tools with new online features. Citcon’s integration of Cash App Pay, …

Prepaid card platform Blackhawk Network said it is working with Visa Inc. to convert its Visa-branded cards from plastic to paper-based materials. Payments provider Central Payments released PayCP, its payout platform that initially includes a virtual Discover prepaid card, a physical Discover prepaid card, push to debit cards via Mastercard Send, and ACH bank …

Artificial intelligence is profoundly impactful from a payment point of view, probably much more so than we can tell now. What we already foresee is part helpful, part alarming. I will dedicate this column to a particular threat: mis-profiling. Google’s AlphaZero AI machine taught itself to play chess by playing …

ChatGPT has brought artificial intelligence into the mainstream, leading to predictions of everything from the end of work to the end of the world. While these predictions lead to great headlines, the reality is that financial-services providers already use AI for things like chatbots and fraud detection. But as this …