Expensify will add travel booking and management capabilities to its financial management platform for expenses and corporate cards. The new Expensify Travel will begin rolling out next week in the Expensify web and mobile apps and will later be integrated into the new chat-based super app, New Expensify, the company said in a Wednesday (May
Bots account for a vast majority of stablecoin transactions, recent Visa research shows. Fewer than 10% of these transactions come from genuine users, according to a new metric from Visa and Allium Labs, showing that just $149 billion of the $2.2 trillion in total transactions last month came from “organic payments activity.” The findings were flagged in a report Sunday (May 5)
Private equity companies are reportedly stepping up efforts to compete with banks on low-interest loans. For example, the Financial Times (FT) reported last week, Apollo Global has increased its long-term forecasts for its lending business, telling investors it expected to be able to originate more than $200 billion a year in new loans, up from $150 billion. Apollo Co-President
Cryptocurrency startups are reportedly engaging in aggressive fundraising as the digital asset space recovers. As Bloomberg News reported Saturday (May 4), this approach entails an open-ended form of fundraising that keeps money flowing and fast-tracks valuations. It’s the opposite of the standard venture capital strategy of low-key rounds spaced out over years. “When a deal
Venezuela is reportedly expected to increase its use of cryptocurrency when the United States reimposes oil sanctions on the country beginning June 1. A Venezuelan opposition politician, Leopoldo Lopez, and a national security leader at New York-based blockchain data firm Chainalysis, Kristofer Doucette, released a report Monday (April 29) saying that democratic governments should set up structures to
Lending marketplace Upstart has debuted a tool to help lenders offer customized loan offers. That tool, dubbed Recognized Customer Personalization (RCP), lets banks and credit unions (CUs) identify when a customer is actively seeking a loan and make them an offer of credit, Upstart said in a Thursday (April 25) news release. “In the current economic environment, lenders are
Investors reportedly expect increased competition in the grocery sector after Amazon’s announcement Tuesday (April 23) of a new grocery delivery subscription benefit. Walmart and Kroger shares declined 1.8% and 2.3%, respectively, Tuesday, in moves that UBS analyst Michael Lasser said showed that investors interpret Amazon’s announcement as a sign of greater competition, Seeking Alpha reported Wednesday (April 24). The new Amazon program offers a delivery
Block ecosystems Square and Cash App have begun rolling out a feature that will allow eligible Square sellers to automatically convert a portion of their daily sales to bitcoin with Cash App. The rollout of this new Bitcoin Conversions feature began Wednesday (April 24), Block said in an email to PYMNTS. “Block believes that bitcoin is an instrument of economic
Equipment finance company Odessa has entered the auto industry. The company has launched an originations platform called Odessa Auto and plans to grow it into a full-service end-to-end auto finance suite, Odessa said in a Wednesday (April 24) press release. “Odessa’s deep asset finance experience enables the company to offer state-of-the-art auto origination technology on Day 1,” Robert Johnson, executive vice
French FinTech Payflows has raised $26 million for its all-in-one platform for finance teams. The company announced the funding on LinkedIn as it emerged from stealth Monday (April 22), saying that its platform would “set finance teams free from boring manual work.” In less than 18 months, Payflows said, “we built a suite of procurement, payments, cash management and