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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post SeatGeek Says Game-Day Playbook Built Around the Mobile Wallet appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "Live entertainment is being rebuilt around the same principles that transformed eCommerce, theme parks and travel.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\n\u201cThe fan\u2019s journey now extends so far beyond that ticket to get into the arena,\u201d Brannon Desseyn, product manager at SeatGeek, told PYMNTS.\nAnd this new fan journey, at least from the operator perspective, is one built atop persistent identity, real-time personalization, integrated payments and behavioral orchestration. The venue is becoming less a place where an event happens and more a managed commerce environment.\n\u201cWe\u2019re really going for these moments where the latency is so low that the fan is almost saying to themselves, \u2018Wow, that was it? That\u2019s all it takes?\u2019\u201d Desseyn said.\nThe result is a system that begins operating the moment a fan enters the arena. Once a ticket is scanned, SeatGeek can instantly recognize the attendee, trigger an offer, and push a virtual prepaid card directly into the user\u2019s mobile wallet.\nWe traditionally used to think about an hour before the event, during the event, and then postgame,\u201d Desseyn said. \u201cBut now we know that event life cycle is stretching even longer as these games and concerts become massive moments in a fan\u2019s life.\u201d\nFrom Ticketing Platform to Venue Infrastructure\nWhen the Cleveland Cavaliers entered the pressure cooker of the NBA playoffs this spring, fans arriving at Rocket Arena encountered more than postseason basketball. Behind the scenes, SeatGeek was quietly testing a broader thesis about where live entertainment is heading: a venue experience built around identity, payments and real-time personalization.\n\u201cThe payments piece of this is a recent addition. Given the advancements in card issuing technology and the things that Apple and Google have been doing on the wallet front, it made it very easy for us to make progress here in a very quick amount of time,\u201d said Desseyn.\nDuring the Cavaliers test, selected fans received a push notification welcoming them to the game along with a $10 concession credit redeemable through Apple Wallet or Google Wallet within seconds.\nThe pilot\u2019s emphasis on reducing friction reflects a larger transformation underway in sports and entertainment venues. Teams and arena operators see themselves not simply as hosts for a three-hour event, but as curators of premium, all-day experiences that blend hospitality, commerce and entertainment.\n\u201cOne of the trends that we see in the sport and entertainment industry is this investment in teams to create premium experiences,\u201d Desseyn said. \u201cIt almost takes on a Disney-like experience, where it\u2019s not just like you\u2019re going to a game for three hours. You\u2019re spending the whole day thinking about the Cavs, being on site with the Cavs.\u201d\nRace for \u2018360-Degree\u2019 Fan View\nFor years, the live-event industry operated through a sprawling patchwork of specialized technologies. A modern arena might rely on one company for ticketing, another for concessions, another for access control, another for loyalty, another for CRM, another for mobile payments and yet another for operational analytics. Integration between those systems often existed in theory more than practice.\nThe problem, Desseyn argued, is not necessarily a lack of data but the fragmentation of it across vendors and platforms.\n\u201cWe know the ticket identity,\u201d he said. \u201cHow can we bring that payments information and the spending information closer to the ticketer?\n\u201cIt\u2019s great that we know 500 people have scanned in the past five minutes,\u201d he added. \u201cBut how do we actually create a system that allows the clients \u2014 the Cavaliers or others \u2014 to then segment those users and target them with an offer or reroute them to a different gate when it\u2019s backed up?\u201d\nBy linking ticket identity to payment credentials, a reality that\u2019s happening through mobile wallets, operators can begin connecting attendance patterns with real-time purchasing behavior. A fan is no longer simply \u201cSection 112, Row F.\u201d They become a dynamic profile.\nThe old model treated the game itself as the product. The emerging model treats the game as the anchor tenant within a broader entertainment life cycle, and that shift changes what venue technology must accomplish. Success is no longer measured solely by ticket throughput or concession sales. Operators are optimizing for customer experience.\nA fan who waits 20 minutes for food misses part of the event. A fan who can move through entry, ordering and purchasing seamlessly spends more and reports higher satisfaction. The operational layer becomes inseparable from the emotional layer.\n\r\n\r\nThe post SeatGeek Says Game-Day Playbook Built Around the Mobile Wallet appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2026-05-19T09:00:21-04:00", "date_modified": "2026-05-19T22:16:37-04:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/SeatGeek-1.png", "tags": [ "digital transformation", "Featured News", "News", "PYMNTS News", "SeatGeek", "ticket sales", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3716316", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2026/the-connected-economy-is-making-companies-worth-a-trillion-dollars/", "title": "The Connected Economy Is Making Companies Worth a Trillion Dollars\u00a0", "content_html": "Samsung\u2019s arrival in the trillion-dollar club this week expands a roster that increasingly defines who controls the architecture of the modern global economy.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post The Connected Economy Is Making Companies Worth a Trillion Dollars\u00a0 appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "Samsung\u2019s arrival in the trillion-dollar club this week expands a roster that increasingly defines who controls the architecture of the modern global economy.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nThat 15-company list of firms with a market capitalization north of $1 trillion spans familiar technology titans alongside companies that, at first glance, may appear to have little in common. After all, should one put executives from other trillion-dollar-club firms like Eli Lilly, Walmart, Berkshire Hathaway, Broadcom\u00a0and the dominant hyperscalers of the AI era all around a dinner table, it might be hard to see how the conversation might steer toward a single commonality other than that of the unprecedented value global capital markets have concentrated at their feet.\nBut beneath the surface, the world\u2019s biggest firms are in fact linked by an emerging pattern. These companies are not merely large. They are not merely valuable. Rather, their scale and their value both stem from the fact that they occupy critical bottlenecks inside systems the rest of the economy cannot function without.\nThe 21st century trillion-dollar corporation is not defined by a consumer brand success story or labeled fairly as a natural byproduct of globalization. Increasingly, crossing the $1 trillion market cap threshold is the economic reward for controlling an indispensable layer of infrastructure\u2014be it supply, distribution, computation or trust\u2014across what PYMNTS has for years termed the Connected Economy.\nSee also: Data Is Dead as a Competitive Advantage. 12 Executives Share What\u2019s Next\nThe Age of the Chokepoint Corporation\nTwentieth-century industrial giants often won by producing more cars, oil or steel than competitors. Today\u2019s most valuable firms win by becoming unavoidable intermediaries. They sit at the center of networks that entire industries depend upon, creating economic gravity that compounds over time.\nThe market today is not just rewarding innovation. It is rewarding strategic centrality.\nSamsung\u2019s ascent captures the trend. The South Korean conglomerate is not simply a consumer electronics company. It is one of the world\u2019s most critical semiconductor manufacturers, deeply embedded in the global supply chain for memory chips, displays and advanced hardware components. In an AI economy increasingly constrained by compute capacity and chip availability, that position has become extraordinarily valuable.\nNvidia offers perhaps the clearest example of chokepoint economics in action. Its GPUs became the essential hardware layer for the AI boom almost by accident, after years of investment in gaming and parallel computing architectures. Once generative AI exploded into the mainstream, the company found itself controlling access to the scarce computational resources required to train and deploy frontier models.\nHealthcare is experiencing a similar concentration effect. Eli Lilly\u2019s market capitalization surge has been fueled by blockbuster obesity and diabetes treatments that are reshaping both medicine and consumer behavior. But the company\u2019s value is not only about drug sales. It stems from control over a category increasingly viewed as foundational to public health systems and long-term healthcare economics.\nRead more:\u00a0Tech Giants Just Made Every Business Their Business\u00a0\nThe New Economics of Indispensability\nIn each case, the trillion-dollar threshold reflects the same market instinct: assign enormous premiums to companies controlling scarce leverage points.\nWalmart, another recent 2026 entrant, offers a different but equally revealing version of the pattern. The U.S. retailer\u2019s dominance rests not only on its sheer scale but also on its logistics supremacy. Walmart operates one of the world\u2019s most sophisticated distribution networks, capable of moving goods across vast geographies with extraordinary efficiency. In an inflationary environment shaped by supply chain disruptions, logistical control itself becomes a form of economic power.\nPYMNTS covered recently how Amazon, another trillion-dollar-club member, is building out its own supply chain network. After all, once a company becomes deeply embedded in critical workflows, switching costs can rise dramatically.\nModern corporate dominance, as the success of the trillion-dollar-club shows, depends less on products than on systems.\nThis is one reason Berkshire Hathaway remains such a powerful presence among the world\u2019s most valuable firms despite operating outside the technology spotlight. Warren Buffett\u2019s conglomerate controls strategic assets across insurance, railroads, energy, manufacturing and finance. These are not glamorous sectors, but they are deeply embedded within the functioning of the broader economy.\nSee also: What 2026 Will Make Obvious\nHow AI Is Accelerating the Trend\nArtificial intelligence is intensifying these concentration dynamics rather than dispersing them.\nTraining frontier models requires massive computational infrastructure, enormous datasets, specialized talent and staggering capital expenditures. Those requirements favor firms already sitting atop existing infrastructure advantages, and the result today is a growing concentration of power among hyperscalers, semiconductor firms and platform companies capable of funding AI at industrial scale.\nThat reality explains why trillion-dollar valuations now cluster around infrastructure layers rather than end-user applications. Investors are betting less on who creates the next viral product and more on who controls the underlying rails powering the Connected Economy.\n\r\n\r\nThe post The Connected Economy Is Making Companies Worth a Trillion Dollars\u00a0 appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2026-05-07T19:04:27-04:00", "date_modified": "2026-05-07T19:04:27-04:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/connected-economy-trillion-dollar-firms.jpeg", "tags": [ "AI", "Connected Economy", "economy", "News", "PYMNTS News", "Samsung", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3532014", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2026/iran-war-becomes-multimillion-dollar-business-for-prediction-markets/", "title": "Iran War Becomes Multimillion Dollar Business for Prediction Markets", "content_html": "The war in Iran has reportedly been good business for the prediction markets sector.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post Iran War Becomes Multimillion Dollar Business for Prediction Markets appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "The war in Iran has reportedly been good business for the prediction markets sector.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nAs Bloomberg News reported Wednesday (March 4), companies such as Polymarket and Kalshi, which offer financial contracts on the outcome of everything from sporting events to elections, are now letting users trade on things like when Iran\u2019s leader would be ousted.\nOn Polymarket, bettors made a record $425 million in wagers on the geopolitics category during the week ending March 1, compared to $164 million the week before, the report added, citing user-compiled data on Dune Analytics.\nAs the report noted, the companies have been criticized for these types of bets. Prediction markets are governed by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which has rules to prevent insider trading and contracts related to war.\nAlthough Polymarket is launching a U.S. venue under CFTC oversight, the platform where the Iran wagers are listed is based offshore, Bloomberg said.\nFor its part, Kalshi has said it avoids any markets directly referring to military action. Its new bets related to Iran deal with questions of whether the country will become a \u201cdemocracy\u201d this year or host a presidential election. These have generally seen less activity than the Polymarket bets, the Bloomberg report said.\nKalshi CEO Tarek Mansour, Bloomberg added, has argued that the contract dealing with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei served a legitimate purpose, saying that leadership changes in Iran hold implications for global oil prices, national security and the larger world order.\n\u201cThese markets have important geopolitical and global economic impacts,\u201d a Kalshi spokesperson told Bloomberg.\nWar-related wagers have gotten the attention of lawmakers, PYMNTS reported earlier this week. Among them is Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who over the weekend posited that insiders may have made money from prediction markets based on the timing of the initial strike on Iran.\n\u201cI\u2019m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this,\u201d Murphy said in a post on X.\nAs covered here last week, the reality around predictions market is a chaotic one, with \u201clots of sports volume, plus jurisdictional trench warfare.\u201d\nStates are issuing cease-and-desist orders against multiple platforms (including Robinhood\u2019s derivatives arm and Crypto.com), while the CFTC has indicated it may go to court to defend the federal government\u2019s right to regulate the predictions space.\nAt the same time, the CFTC is reportedly working on new regulations governing event contracts. This is a sign, PYMNTS wrote, that \u201cthe grown-ups have arrived because the kids won\u2019t stop inventing new ways to wager on reality.\u201d\n\r\n\r\nThe post Iran War Becomes Multimillion Dollar Business for Prediction Markets appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2026-03-04T12:28:32-05:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-04T12:28:32-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/prediction-markets-Iran-war.jpeg", "tags": [ "Iran War", "Kalshi", "News", "Polymarket", "prediction markets", "PYMNTS News", "What's Hot", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3529994", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2026/nvidia-expands-telecom-push-with-ai-native-6g-initiative/", "title": "Nvidia Expands Telecom Push With AI-Native 6G Initiative", "content_html": "Nvidia and a coalition of global telecom operators and infrastructure vendors announced a strategic commitment at the Mobile World Congress to build the next generation of wireless networks, 6G, on platforms that are open, secure and AI-native, signaling a shift in how future connectivity will be architected and deployed worldwide.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post Nvidia Expands Telecom Push With AI-Native 6G Initiative appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "Nvidia and a coalition of global telecom operators and infrastructure vendors announced a strategic commitment at the Mobile World Congress to build the next generation of wireless networks, 6G, on platforms that are open, secure and AI-native, signaling a shift in how future connectivity will be architected and deployed worldwide.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nThe initiative brings together major players including Booz Allen, BT Group, Cisco, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Mitre, Nokia, OCUDU Ecosystem Foundation, ODC, SK Telecom, SoftBank and T-Mobile in a shared effort to create wireless infrastructure capable of meeting the demands of artificial intelligence at scale.\nNvidia described this coalition\u2019s work as foundational to a new era of connectivity where networks are not merely conduits for data but intelligent systems that embed AI across the radio access network (RAN), network edge and core.\nThese AI-native platforms are intended to support emerging use cases that go beyond traditional communication, such as autonomous vehicles, industrial robotics, smart cities and vast arrays of connected sensors, all of which require real-time intelligence, resilient performance and high trustworthiness.\nJensen Huang, founder and chief executive of Nvidia, said AI is redefining computing and driving one of the largest infrastructure buildouts in history, with telecommunications next in line for transformation.\nThe partners underscored the importance of open and software-defined platforms to empower a broad ecosystem of operators, vendors, developers and researchers. These open platforms aim to accelerate innovation, simplify interoperability, and build resilience into supply chains critical for future network deployments.\nAllison Kirkby, CEO of BT Group, framed connectivity as the backbone of economic growth, arguing that open and trustworthy AI-native platforms will help the industry scale beyond 5G while unlocking powerful new capabilities at scale.\nLikewise, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim H\u00f6ttges said an intelligent and trusted 6G infrastructure will be essential for delivering superior customer experiences and unlocking new value streams for enterprises and consumers alike.\nThe coalition also drew comments from U.S. government officials. Arielle Roth, assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, highlighted the role of U.S. leadership in shaping secure, next-generation networks, stressing that this global collaboration aligns with broader national competitiveness and security objectives.\nAsian and European operators echoed the need for AI-native design, with SK Telecom and SoftBank executives noting that open, software-defined 6G will serve as the platform for future innovation and ecosystem growth. T-Mobile\u2019s leadership described 6G as the backbone of the AI era, enabling autonomous systems and new digital business models at scale.\nThe 6G effort arrives as Nvidia posts record financial results, reflecting the explosive demand for AI computing infrastructure that also underpins its networking ambitions.\n\r\n\r\nThe post Nvidia Expands Telecom Push With AI-Native 6G Initiative appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2026-03-03T19:12:43-05:00", "date_modified": "2026-03-03T19:12:43-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Nvidia-6G-1.jpg", "tags": [ "6G", "News", "NVIDIA", "PYMNTS News", "What's Hot", "wireless networks", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3484499", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2026/prediction-markets-chip-away-at-sports-bettings-territory/", "title": "Prediction Markets Chip Away at Sports Betting\u2019s Territory", "content_html": "Sports-related bets on Kalshi are now generating estimated annualized revenues of roughly $1.3 billion.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post Prediction Markets Chip Away at Sports Betting’s Territory appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "Sports-related bets on Kalshi are now generating estimated annualized revenues of roughly $1.3 billion.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nAs the Financial Times (FT) reported Saturday (Feb. 14), that figure is nearly a quarter of the total sportsbook revenue for betting giant DraftKings and spotlights the increasing threat that prediction markets like Kalshi present to the $14 billion U.S. sports gambling market.\nThe report came one day after DraftKings shares fell after the company said it expected 2026 revenues would be $6.5 billion to $6.9 billion, short of analysts\u2019 $7.2 billion projections. Flutter, which owns rival FanDuel, saw its stock fall as well, with both companies losing more than half their market value in the past year.\nFT said its analysis of Kalshi data found that trade volume and fees ballooned last fall with the start of football season in the U.S. As of this month, the platform\u2019s annualized revenues for sports trading accounted for roughly 90% of its fees.\nMonthly activity users on Kalshi\u2019s app have jumped from 600,000 at the start of last year to 5.1 million as of Feb. 9, the report added, citing data from Sensor Tower.\nStill, sportsbook companies have dismissed the idea that they face a threat, FT added. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins said that, in markets where sports betting was legal, those moving to prediction markets were mostly \u201clow-margin or even negative-margin customers.”\nFor most retail bettors, Robins said sportsbooks provided a more fully fledged product with \u201cbetter promotions,\u201d while prediction markets were a \u201cgreat substitute\u201d for people living in states that outlaw sports gambling.\nIn exploring DraftKongs latest earnings last week, PYMNTS wrote that the company \u201cis betting, quite literally, that it can lead that transition by redefining not just how people bet on sports, but how they engage with uncertainty itself.\u201d\nTo that end, the company is touting Predictions, which lets users trade event-based contracts, and which DraftKings sees as potentially representing a $10 billion annual gross revenue opportunity over time.\n\u201cBut even as DraftKings approaches profitability, elements of its revenue base remain inherently variable,\u201d the report added. \u201cSports outcomes can materially affect quarterly results, with the company estimating that a one-standard-deviation swing could move revenue by roughly $150 million in either direction.\u201d\nPYMNTS reported in December on the influx of U.S.-accessible prediction market platforms now that these companies are regulated at the federal level by the CFTC, rather than at the state level by gambling commissions. However, regulators in more than a dozen states are challenging the legality of prediction markets, with varying degrees of\u00a0 success.\n\r\n\r\nThe post Prediction Markets Chip Away at Sports Betting’s Territory appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2026-02-15T18:54:42-05:00", "date_modified": "2026-02-15T18:56:09-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Kalshi-sports-betting1.jpg", "tags": [ "DraftKings", "FanDuel", "gambling", "Kalshi", "News", "prediction markets", "PYMNTS News", "Sports betting", "What's Hot", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3421828", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2026/portable-credentials-give-the-labor-economy-a-new-kind-of-job-security/", "title": "Portable Credentials Help Hourly Workers Keep Income Flowing", "content_html": "PYMNTS Intelligence\u2019s continuing explorations into the Labor Economy reveal that roughly 60 million Americans earn $25 an hour or less, representing 36.5% of total U.S. employment while driving about 15.1% of consumer spending, or more than $1.7 trillion annually.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post Portable Credentials Help Hourly Workers Keep Income Flowing appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "PYMNTS Intelligence\u2019s continuing explorations into the Labor Economy reveal that roughly 60 million Americans earn $25 an hour or less, representing 36.5% of total U.S. employment while driving about 15.1% of consumer spending, or more than $1.7 trillion annually.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nBecause of that scale, even modest shifts in wages or employment continuity have measurable macroeconomic consequences. PYMNTS, in collaboration with Ingo Payments and WorkWhile, estimates that a 1% change in Labor Economy wages translates into a $17 billion swing in GDP.\nBut there\u2019s a constraint: mobility. PYMNTS Intelligence and its collaborators describe today\u2019s hourly workforce as \u201csafe but stuck.\u201d Labor Economy workers report high confidence in keeping their current jobs but far lower confidence in finding new ones, a lock-in dynamic that limits their ability to improve outcomes.\nWhen workers feel secure but immobile, they prioritize stability over optimization. Housing and transportation take precedence, while healthcare compliance, subscriptions and credit health become negotiable. From a financial services perspective, that behavior increases the likelihood of recurring liquidity shortfalls and weakens traditional underwriting signals.\nSkills That Travel\nAgainst that backdrop, skills portability can function as a practical form of job security.\nPYMNTS CEO Karen Webster has written that the next phase of Labor Economy innovation moves beyond faster pay toward preserving worker progress as people shift between employers. Today, skills, certifications and reliability records are typically trapped inside individual platforms or companies. When workers change roles, that accumulated value often resets. Webster points to portable credentials, standardized certifications and benefits that follow workers as mechanisms to make experience visible and transferable.\n\u201cAI becomes an enabler here, documenting skills, validating experience, matching workers to higher-value roles and making progression visible and transferable,\u201d Webster wrote.\u00a0 The data in the Labor Economy analyses show that individuals establish online presences across employers and use platform-based work as a buffer against income volatility, with gig and shift platforms accounting for 15% to 30% of total income for many workers. Infrastructure that allows their skills and reliability to move as easily as their labor can be a key way to keep the work coming in.\nThe federal data underscores how widespread credentialing already is. The Bureau of Labor Statistics\u2019 Occupational Requirements Survey finds that in 2025, 22.9% of civilian workers were required to hold a license or certification, 6.5% required an educational certificate and 1.2% required an apprenticeship. In healthcare practitioner roles, that figure rises to 93.4%, while 17.3% of construction and extraction workers require apprenticeships.\nThese credentials represent verified skill, training and readiness to work. When recognized across employers and platforms, they shorten hiring cycles, reduce mismatches between workers and roles, and increase the probability that a worker can move quickly from one job to the next.\u00a0 Platforms that combine shift matching, rapid onboarding and wage disbursement reduce those timing gaps while also building persistent work histories. Over time, these systems create verifiable records of attendance, performance and skills that can travel with workers, raising their odds of staying employed even as they move between roles.\nThat continuity has downstream effects. Since Labor Economy workers account for more than one-third of U.S. employees, so stabilizing their income directly stabilizes consumption. Recent Wage to Wallet data shows that December\u2019s 1.9% monthly wage increase, if sustained, would add $32.5 billion to annual GDP.\nFrom Employment Stability to Credit Signals\nFor lenders and risk teams, portable credentials and platform-based employment histories introduce a new category of underwriting input.\nWhen workers can document skills, training and reliability across employers, income becomes more predictable and employment gaps shrink. That reduces dependence on overdrafts and short-term credit used solely to bridge timing mismatches.\nStable work histories, credentialed skills and consistent platform engagement provide alternative signals of capacity and persistence. As those signals strengthen, lenders gain clearer visibility into repayment potential, while workers benefit from improved access to mainstream financial products.\nIn that sense, portable credentials operate as more than r\u00e9sum\u00e9 enhancements. They function as economic infrastructure that lead to healthier credit outcomes and a more resilient economy.\n \n\r\n\r\nThe post Portable Credentials Help Hourly Workers Keep Income Flowing appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2026-01-26T17:26:27-05:00", "date_modified": "2026-01-26T17:28:19-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Labor-Economy-construction1.jpg", "tags": [ "featured insights", "gig economy", "Ingo Payments", "Labor Economy", "News", "Payments Intelligence", "portable credentials", "PYMNTS Intelligence", "PYMNTS News", "WorkWhile", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3338661", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2025/executives-say-ai-redefines-value-and-the-payments-competitive-landscape/", "title": "Executives Say AI Redefines Value and the Payments Competitive Landscape", "content_html": "Karen Webster describes Monday Conversation as a window into \u201cinteresting companies doing interesting things.\u201d In 2025, the most useful interviews for banking, payments and FinTech leaders were often the ones that barely mentioned payments at all. They were about what sits beneath the transaction: workflow, trust and data quality.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post Executives Say AI Redefines Value and the Payments Competitive Landscape appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "Karen Webster describes Monday Conversation as a window into \u201cinteresting companies doing interesting things.\u201d In 2025, the most useful interviews for banking, payments and FinTech leaders were often the ones that barely mentioned payments at all. They were about what sits beneath the transaction: workflow, trust and data quality.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nAcross farms, clinics, AI labs and labor platforms, a theme emerged: payments is increasingly the interface, not the moat. The moat is the operating system. Here are eight Monday Conversations from 2025 that captured that shift.\nNelly: Europe\u2019s digital health problem is a process problem (Feb. 3)\nNelly CEO Niklas Radner came to healthtech by way of Klarna, and he brought the same instinct: win by redesigning process. Nelly\u2019s thesis is that digitizing healthcare practices starts with workflow that captures data at the right moment, then turns that data into better patient experiences and better financial products. When paperwork becomes the bottleneck, staffing becomes geopolitics. \u201cWe see doctors fleeing [from Germany] to Switzerland, and they call themselves bureaucratic refugees,\u201d Radner said.\nBushel: Tariffs hit the Midwest and software shows up (Apr. 21)\nBushel CEO Jake Joraanstad made tariffs feel less like a policy debate and more like a margin call. Commodity prices, input inflation and higher interest rates collide in the cash flow reality of small and family farms. Bushel\u2019s bet is that digitization changes outcomes by giving farmers timing, transparency and control \u2014 especially when the market moves before the office opens. \u201cOver half of the grain offers made through our platform are submitted outside of regular business hours,\u201d Joraanstad said. \nRezolve Ai: eCommerce\u2019s real problem isn\u2019t payments \u2014 it\u2019s confusion (May 5)\nRezolve Ai CEO Daniel Wagner reframed cart abandonment as a human-factors failure. Digital shopping still assumes consumers arrive with perfect product knowledge and the patience to filter endlessly. Physical retail works because a salesperson translates intent into a decision. Wagner\u2019s wager is that AI can bring that translation layer online and compress browsing into buying. \u201cThe way in which we navigate eCommerce is not good\u2026 it is no longer ideal,\u201d Wagner told Webster. \nUnlearn: Digital twins could make clinical trials feel less like roulette (June 16)\nUnlearn founder Jon Walsh argued that AI-powered \u201cdigital twins\u201d can shrink placebo groups, accelerate timelines and make trials more ethical, especially in diseases with small patient populations. The provocation wasn\u2019t just speed. It was a new promise for medicine: fewer cycles of trial-and-error, both in R&D and eventually in treatment. \u201cOur long-term mission is to advance AI to eliminate trial and error in medicine,\u201d Walsh said. \nWorkWhile: Underwriting labor is the next underwriting category (June 30)\nWorkWhile COO Simon Khalaf (former Marqeta CEO) described the Labor Economy as a prediction market hiding in plain sight. If you can forecast show rates and job fit, you can build a portable stack of instant pay, benefits and financial services around the worker, not the employer. The subversive idea: future wages become collateral, and labor data becomes a credit file. \u201cWe\u2019re better at predicting humans than most companies are at predicting whether you\u2019ll pay your credit card,\u201d Khalaf said. \nAutonomize AI: America doesn\u2019t do healthcare (July 7)\nAutonomize AI CEO Ganesh Padmanabhan aimed at the administrative drag that burns out clinicians and delays care: prior authorization, intake, policy matching and patient communications. Agentic AI matters, in his view, because it can distill messy clinical documentation and attach evidence and provenance to each step. His sharpest point is also a measurement critique: incentives track treatment, not prevention. \u201cWe don\u2019t do healthcare in this country. We do sick care,\u201d Padmanabhan said.\nBaseten: The AI gold rush isn\u2019t about models \u2014 it\u2019s about rails (Sept. 22)\nBaseten CEO Tuhin Srivastava put a payments-style frame around AI: training gets headlines, but inference gets adoption. What wins is infrastructure that makes complexity disappear while increasing trust, uptime and security \u2014 the same forces that made card networks durable. His edge case is speed: the fastest builders outsource the non-core parts of AI delivery to specialists. \u201cThat advantage is speed\u2026 you can only move fast if you delegate away stuff that is not core to you,\u201d Srivastava said. \nNova Credit: The next credit bureau is real-time (Oct. 27)\nNova Credit CEO Misha Esipov challenged the core assumption of credit scoring: that liabilities and repayment history are the \u201ctruth.\u201d In a gig economy, the missing truth is cash flow \u2014 income, expenses and stability visible in bank data. Esipov argued that cash flow underwriting is shifting from experimentation to infrastructure, but only if the industry can standardize messy transaction data into something risk teams trust. \u201cThis is not a game of basis points of improvement. This is a step change \u2014 hundreds of basis points in approval rates,\u201d Esipov said. \nThe connective tissue across these conversations is the migration of value from transactions to systems. A grain offer placed at dawn. A clinical trial redesigned around simulation. A shift filled because an algorithm understands skills. A credit decision built on permissioned cash flow. Each is a workflow decision that becomes a financial decision.\nFor leaders in banking, payments and FinTech, the 2025 Monday Conversation lesson is clarifying: your next competitor may not be \u201ca payments company.\u201d It may be the company that owns the experience and therefore owns the economics above it.\n\r\n\r\nThe post Executives Say AI Redefines Value and the Payments Competitive Landscape appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2025-12-29T04:00:46-05:00", "date_modified": "2025-12-28T22:47:56-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-20261.jpg", "tags": [ "AI", "Autonomize AI", "Baseten", "Bushel", "Connected Economy", "Main Feature", "monday conversation", "Nelly", "News", "Nova Credit", "PYMNTS News", "Rezolve Ai", "Unlearn", "WorkWhile", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3337755", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2025/the-five-nines-of-uptime-are-the-connected-economys-new-currency/", "title": "Uptime Becomes the New Test of Digital Trust", "content_html": "The story of digital transformation across the Connected Economy![\"\u2122\"](\"https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/72x72/2122.png\")
is becoming inextricably tied to expectations around uptime.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post Uptime Becomes the New Test of Digital Trust appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "The story of digital transformation across the Connected Economy is becoming inextricably tied to expectations around uptime.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nWhether the system in question is a cloud platform, a payments network or even a blockchain, the five nines, representing 99.999% availability, have become table stakes.\nAfter all, in the early marketing of public blockchains, uptime was treated less as a technical metric than as a philosophical guarantee. Bitcoin, ethereum and their successors were framed as systems that could not be turned off, constrained or meaningfully interrupted. Decentralization itself was the redundancy plan.\nFor enterprises now considering stablecoin issuance, on-chain treasury management or blockchain-based settlement, that framing has begun to collide with a more prosaic reality. In 2025, downtime on public blockchain infrastructure, like Coinbase\u2019s Base layer-2 blockchain, ceased to be an edge case and instead became an operational variable that finance leaders were increasingly forced to model.\nIt wasn\u2019t just blockchain, either. This past Saturday (Dec. 20), a widespread PG&E outage cut power to nearly one-third of San Francisco, throwing self-driving and autonomous vehicles into a state of confusion. Autonomous vehicles struggled, not because self-driving technology is inherently flawed, but because it was operating within a broader system that failed.\nSimilarly, AWS and Cloudflare disruptions in 2025 took large portions of the internet offline, from eCommerce platforms to media sites to crypto services. No serious observer concluded that the internet itself was unreliable or obsolete. Instead, those outages reinforced a familiar lesson: resilience depends on architectural choices, redundancy and dependency management.\nRead also: PYMNTS Execs Say Resilience Isn\u2019t a Buzzword. It\u2019s Their Business Model\nUptime Emerges as a Design Principle for Digital Payments and Commerce\nAs businesses look ahead to 2026, the systems that power finance, mobility, commerce and communications are no longer being judged primarily on innovation and capability but on their ability to stay on.\n\u201cWe had 100% uptime this year. What you want is a Black Friday and not a blackout Friday,\u201d Entersekt\u00a0Chief Strategy Officer\u00a0Dewald Nolte said.\u00a0\u201cOur operations team is absolutely the unsung heroes.\u201d\nFor firms embracing the five nines of 99.999% uptime, that allows them to be down around just five or so minutes during the course of the year. For payments businesses pushing billions of dollars in transactions, that can represent millions of dollars of lost volume.\n\u201cPlatform resiliency and business continuity planning, in my opinion, has been our number one unsung hero,\u201d Rinku Sharma, chief technology officer at\u00a0Boost Payment Solutions, told PYMNTS.\nFor enterprises, uptime and resiliency trade-offs are unavoidable. Financial institutions have long operated under stringent uptime requirements, not because outages never occur, but because the consequences of failure are systemic.\n\u201cWe draw the line where\u00a0innovation\u00a0would compromise the stability, security or affordability of the customer experience,\u201d\u00a0Jared Rutkowski, head of payables and receivables at\u00a0FIS, told PYMNTS.\n\u201cCustomers want innovation, but they need reliability more,\u201d he added.\nSee more: The Under-the-Radar Changes Transforming How Money Moves\nMitigating the Impact of Outages Becomes an Operational Reality\nWhat has changed is not the existence of outages, but the expectations surrounding them. In a connected economy, uptime is no longer a feature\u2014it is a prerequisite. The systems most exposed to failure are not necessarily the newest, but the ones whose designers assumed availability rather than engineered for it.\nAs technologies move from experimental to essential, the tolerance for disruption collapses. Downtime that once could be explained away as the cost of innovation now carries reputational, regulatory and financial consequences. The promise of constant availability has become inseparable from trust itself.\nAs PYMNTS covered this month, what should have been a Cyber Monday victory lap for\u00a0Shopify\u00a0turned into a midday nightmare as merchants worldwide lost access to their admin dashboards and point\u2011of\u2011sale systems on one of the busiest online shopping days of the year.\nAnd at the start of 2025, a days-long outage at Capital One locked thousands of customers from their accounts.\nThese incidents are not unique. Taken together, they present a vivid illustration of a recurring pattern in modern technology failures. Highly sophisticated components are embedded within complex, interdependent systems. When one layer fails, whether it\u2019s power, connectivity or compute, the failure propagates upward.\nFinance teams and enterprise IT functions must now ask questions that would have seemed heretical a few years ago: What happens if a network is unavailable for six hours? For a day? What are our fallback procedures? Who bears responsibility?\nThese questions do not undermine innovation. They professionalize it. Technologies that cannot answer them will struggle to move beyond pilot programs and proofs of concept. Those that can will earn the trust required to operate at scale.\n\r\n\r\nThe post Uptime Becomes the New Test of Digital Trust appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2025-12-26T17:08:17-05:00", "date_modified": "2025-12-28T19:52:20-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/connected-economy-digital-transformation.jpeg", "tags": [ "Blockchain", "Digital Payments", "digital transformation", "Featured News", "Infrastructure", "News", "PYMNTS News", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3332489", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2025/connected-tech-ownership-drives-changes-in-how-consumers-pay/", "title": "Connected Tech Ownership Drives Changes in How Consumers Pay", "content_html": "Consumers are not racing to add more devices, but the way those devices shape how people pay is changing steadily and in ways that matter for the future of commerce.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post Connected Tech Ownership Drives Changes in How Consumers Pay appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "Consumers are not racing to add more devices, but the way those devices shape how people pay is changing steadily and in ways that matter for the future of commerce.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nThat is the central takeaway from\u00a0\u201cHow People Pay: Consumer Preference for Connected Technology,\u201d the February 2025 PYMNTS Intelligence eBook. The report tracks how U.S. consumers adopt connected devices and how those choices influence payment behavior across channels, devices and income levels.\nThe data shows that while device ownership growth has slowed, usage patterns tied to payments continue to evolve, creating a widening gap between consumers who treat connectivity as essential infrastructure and those who see it as functional but sufficient.\nThe report finds that 76% of consumers now own four or more connected devices, up from earlier years as everyday products increasingly include embedded connectivity. Yet ownership clusters into three stable personas. Roughly 4 in 10 consumers remain in the \u201cBasic Tech\u201d category, relying on smartphones and laptops. About half fall into the \u201cMainstream Tech\u201d group with broader but still selective device ownership. Only about 1 in 10 qualifies as \u201cConnected Tech,\u201d a segment that integrates connectivity deeply into daily life and commerce.\nThis stability suggests saturation rather than stagnation. Consumers are not abandoning technology, but many appear content with the devices they already have. What changes instead is how those devices influence purchasing behavior, payment choice and channel preference.\nKey data points from the report illustrate how sharply behavior diverges across these groups:\n\n48% of Connected Tech consumers used a digital wallet in the past 30 days, compared with 32% of Basic Tech consumers, making them roughly 50% more likely to rely on wallets for transactions.\n60% of Connected Tech consumers did not use cash or checks in the past 30 days, a share that reflects a 34% decline in physical money usage compared to three years ago.\n35% of Connected Tech consumers made their most recent retail purchase online, versus 24% of Basic Tech consumers, underscoring the link between device ownership and digital purchasing.\n\nBeyond payments, the report highlights how demographics and income shape connected behavior. Millennials and bridge millennials lead in advanced device adoption, with 16% of bridge millennials classified as Connected Tech consumers. Baby boomers and seniors remain far more likely to stay in the Basic Tech category. Income plays an equally decisive role. More than 60% of consumers earning under $50,000 annually fall into the Basic Tech segment, reflecting practical choices rather than exclusion from the digital economy.\nImportantly, the data shows that lower-income consumers are not disconnected. Smartphones and laptops provide sufficient access to digital commerce and financial services. What income limits is the expansion into secondary and tertiary devices that deepen engagement and shift payment behavior.\nAnother notable trend appears among Mainstream Tech consumers. This group shows a steady rise in mobile purchasing over the past three years, with 26% using a mobile device in one of their most recent transactions. This suggests that behavioral change does not require full immersion in connected ecosystems. Incremental shifts still matter.\nThe broader implication for banks, merchants and payment providers is clear. Growth will come less from pushing consumers to acquire more devices and more from designing experiences that align with how people already live and pay. Connectivity is no longer novel. It is normalized. That reality raises the stakes for usability, trust and seamless payment integration. The infrastructure is largely in place. The next phase is about how effectively it is used.\n\r\n\r\nThe post Connected Tech Ownership Drives Changes in How Consumers Pay appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2025-12-26T04:00:15-05:00", "date_modified": "2025-12-23T22:39:51-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/connected-devices1.jpg", "tags": [ "connected devices", "data point", "featured insights", "Featured News", "News", "Payment Methods", "Payments Intelligence", "PYMNTS Intelligence", "PYMNTS News", "The Data Point", "Connected Economy" ] }, { "id": "https://www.pymnts.com/?p=3332285", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/connectedeconomy/2025/in-2025-card-networks-reshaped-commerce-while-banks-rewired-payments/", "title": "In 2025 Card Networks Reshaped Commerce While Banks Rewired Payments", "content_html": "If there was a single through line in PYMNTS\u2019 2025 conversations with the major card networks, banks and FinTechs, it was that \u201cpayments\u201d is no longer treated as a discrete function. It is increasingly positioned as an always-on operating system for commerce\u2014one where data, security and user experience are inseparable.
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\r\n\r\n\r\nThe post In 2025 Card Networks Reshaped Commerce While Banks Rewired Payments appeared first on PYMNTS.com.
\n", "content_text": "If there was a single through line in PYMNTS\u2019 2025 conversations with the major card networks, banks and FinTechs, it was that \u201cpayments\u201d is no longer treated as a discrete function. It is increasingly positioned as an always-on operating system for commerce\u2014one where data, security and user experience are inseparable.\r\n\t\r\n\t\t\r\n\t\r\n\r\n\r\n\t\nNo company leaned into that framing more consistently than Visa. Early in the year, Sam Hamilton, Visa\u2019s head of AI and data, described generative AI not as an add-on feature, but as a force that will show up across the network\u2019s value proposition. \u201cI can\u2019t think of one area that GenAI is not going to transform,\u201d Hamilton said, emphasizing that the usefulness of that transformation depends on trusted inputs and governance.\nVisa executives also returned repeatedly to the idea that consumer journeys are now designed \u201coutside-in.\u201d In a PYMNTS interview focused on merchant strategy, Visa Acceptance Solutions\u2019 Matt Swatzell highlighted a basic reality that merchants often under-estimate: the sale might happen in-store, but the decision increasingly happens on a phone. That shift, he suggested, raises the bar for consistency across channels\u2014pricing, inventory visibility, fulfillment options and payments all have to line up.\nThe implications went beyond front-end UX. In another 2025 discussion, Visa\u2019s Nick Roberts described a card business where retention is won (or lost) long before the customer actually closes an account. \u201cIt\u2019s always about starting and continuing the relationship,\u201d Roberts told PYMNTS, arguing that issuers have to spot \u201csilent churn\u201d\u2014the gradual shift of spend away from the card\u2014before it becomes irreversible. The message: loyalty is now an analytics problem as much as a rewards problem.\nVisa\u2019s push toward \u201cunified commerce\u201d fit the same pattern. The company\u2019s interviews this year framed unified commerce as less about new gadgets and more about removing operational seams\u2014between in-store and online, between checkout and post-purchase service, and between payment acceptance and fraud defense. Visa\u2019s point was straightforward: smaller merchants will not \u201cout-scale\u201d retail giants, but they can compete by collapsing complexity and responding faster.\nConsumer Credentials\nMastercard\u2019s 2025 interviews approached the market from a slightly different angle: shifting choice and control to the consumer, and building new toolkits for the middle market. In a conversation about Mastercard One Credential, Bunita Sawhney, the company\u2019s chief consumer product officer, noted that consumers want help managing money across accounts and payment types. Many, she said, \u201chave a high desire to have tools that help them become strong and confident money managers.\u201d\nOn the B2B side, Mastercard\u2019s Jane Prokop described a middle-market segment that gets underserved by products built for either very small firms or very large enterprises. \u201cThe lack of access to the right kind of capital to grow the business is a huge pain point in the middle market,\u201d she said, arguing that richer data and more modern underwriting approaches are needed to match how these firms actually operate.\nDiscover\u2019s most vivid 2025 interview moments landed in the AI-and-infrastructure conversation. In a PYMNTS interview with Discover Network\u2019s\u00a0Judith McGuire and Worldpay\u2019s\u00a0Ian Hillis, McGuire argued that AI\u2019s biggest payoff comes when it turns transaction data into network-level visibility and faster decisioning. \u201cAI is helping us unlock the power of data,\u201d she said, tying that to fraud reduction and speed.\nAmerican Express,\u00a0for its part, spent 2025 drawing a line between automation and brand identity. In a wide-ranging discussion about AI in servicing, Amex executive Gary Kensey summarized the company\u2019s governing principle this way: \u201cAI should work in service of people, not instead of them.\u201d The point was less philosophical than operational\u2014Amex wants AI to reduce internal friction (summaries, recommendations, workflow routing) while preserving human judgment when customers need reassurance.\nAnd in the premium-card arms race, Amex\u2019s interviews signaled that loyalty is still the north star\u2014especially as annual fees rise and consumers re-evaluate what they carry. Raymond Joabar, Amex group president for global commercial services, told PYMNTS that cardmembers are asking for \u201cmore rewards\u201d and \u201cnew sets of tools\u201d that help run and grow their businesses.\nConcora Credit, which plays in near-prime and non-prime segments, brought a different lens to loyalty: incentives have to be practical and immediately felt. In a PYMNTS interview, Chief Commercial Officer Rolando De Gracia said co-brand success starts with \u201calignment of incentives,\u201d warning that mismatched objectives between issuer and brand can weaken the partnership before it scales.\nBanking Roadmaps\nIn 2025, bank interviews on PYMNTS were notably unsentimental about \u201cdigital transformation.\u201d The conversations were less about roadmaps and more about deadlines set by clients who now assume payments should move when business happens.\nAt Citi, Stephen Randall, global head of liquidity management services, framed the shift as a structural reset for treasury. \u201cIf you move to an always-on structure then effectively it is a continuous round-the-clock process,\u201d he said, describing a world where liquidity is managed continuously rather than once per day.\nBank of America\u2019s interviews stayed close to the mechanics of real-world disruption: tariffs, geopolitics and supply chain shocks. Geoff Brady, head of global trade and supply chain finance, described the bank\u2019s role in simple terms: \u201cWe\u2019re here to facilitate global commerce.\u201d He then tied that mandate to financing, risk mitigation and working capital optimization\u2014less a product pitch than an explanation of why trade finance exists at all.\nFifth Third Bank\u2019s interviews offered a reminder that the digital economy still runs on physical processes. Robert Norman, the bank\u2019s head of cash logistics strategy, described cash-handling as labor-intensive and exposed to loss. \u201cThey\u2019re putting the cash aside and then counting it at the end of the day,\u201d he said\u2014an image that captures why automation in cash logistics is framed as both a security upgrade and a productivity tool.\nHSBC\u2019s Andrew Fullam, CFO for the U.S. and Americas, described supply chain planning under tariff uncertainty with a bluntness that matched the mood of many CFOs this year. \u201cUncertainty is probably the key word here,\u201d he told PYMNTS, pointing to overlapping tariff regimes and carve-outs that complicate planning and widen the performance gap between resilient firms and exposed ones.\nThe New Economics of Speed\nIf banks emphasized continuous operations, processors and FinTechs emphasized continuous responsibility for fraud, compliance, customer outcomes and unit economics.\nMaverick Payments\u2019 Kyle Becker captured that tension in a PYMNTS interview about real-time fraud and bank oversight. \u201cIt\u2019s an artful balancing act for sure,\u201d he said, noting that sponsor institutions ultimately answer to both regulators and card brands. Maverick\u2019s pitch was that processors are no longer simply vendors; they are increasingly expected to behave like risk-and-compliance extensions of the bank.\nIngo Payments\u00a0CEO\u00a0Drew Edwards made a similarly economic argument about speed. Too many companies, he suggested, treat instant payouts as a feature checkbox\u2014inviting commoditization. \u201cThey\u2019re going to be facing a race to the bottom,\u201d Edwards said, warning that fee-per-transaction economics collapse without a broader strategy around value, risk and ecosystem design.\nVelera\u2019s 2025 interviews reflected credit unions\u2019 search for partners in a tougher market. In a PYMNTS conversation, Velera\u2019s Chris Corse pointed to macro uncertainty and a valuation reset from the \u201cfrothy\u201d era\u2014conditions that are pushing more disciplined partnership structures and risk-aware product planning.\n\r\n\r\nThe post In 2025 Card Networks Reshaped Commerce While Banks Rewired Payments appeared first on PYMNTS.com.", "date_published": "2025-12-23T04:01:45-05:00", "date_modified": "2025-12-22T20:59:06-05:00", "authors": [ { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" } ], "author": { "name": "PYMNTS", "url": "https://www.pymnts.com/author/pymnts/", "avatar": "https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/679fcf5c2ed5358e99e8e23b22e3b5d761e37bdb76fa7b0e13d8ecd9ff01bf88?s=512&d=blank&r=g" }, "image": "https://www.pymnts.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/connected-economy-banking-fintech.jpeg", "tags": [ "banking", "Featured News", "FinTechs", "News", "payments innovation", "PYMNTS News", "Connected Economy" ] } ] }