Visa has launched a new platform designed to help small business owners access capital, reach customers and adopt modern business tools. The Visa & Main platform will continue adding resources, programming and local activations, the company said in a Thursday (Feb. 5) press release emailed to PYMNTS. “With Visa & Main, we’re connecting Visa’s […]The post Visa Platform Offers Small Businesses Access to Financing, Marketing and Tech Support appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Compliance/identity platform Duna has raised $35 million in a Series A funding round. The new funding, announced Thursday (Feb. 5), will help Duna as it works towards its goal of building a “global trust infrastructure” by offering a “digital passport for every business,” leading to “a network for shareable identity and one-click onboarding.” Founded […]The post Stripe Alums Raise $35 Million for Identity Platform Duna appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Agentic artificial intelligence is gaining momentum across banking and commerce, and payments networks are among the leaders. Case in point: Mastercard announced Jan. 27 the Mastercard Agent Suite, a set of services and customizable AI agents that it said will help businesses build, test and deploy agents in day-to-day operations. Kaushik Gopal, executive vice […]The post Mastercard Says Readiness Is Key as Enterprises Move to AI Agents appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Watch more: Office of the CFO With Smarsh Ian Goodkind CFOs have traditionally been tasked with keeping things in their place. For years, that has kept CFOs mostly in place themselves, behind the walls of their own finance functions. But change comes fast, and it doesn’t spare the finance department no matter the projections. […]The post Smarsh CFO Says Finance Now Shapes Product Decisions appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Instant payouts have moved from novelty to norm, reshaping how consumers expect to receive money across payroll, insurance, rewards and platform disbursements. Nearly three in four consumers have now received at least one payout instantly, a clear sign that instant delivery has reached mainstream scale. Yet the data also shows a growing disconnect between access […]The post Instant Payments Hit Mainstream as Consumer Adoption Climbs to 74% appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Nearly three-quarters of credit cardholders who requested a limit increase and were denied turned to installment plans as an alternative source of credit, revealing how rejection decisions push consumers toward competing financial products. The findings come from “Credit Limits: Understanding Requests, Denials And The Consumer Experience,” a PYMNTS Intelligence and Elan Credit Card collaboration […]The post Two-Thirds of Cardholders View Issuers More Positively After Credit Limit Increases appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Digital wallet use has accelerated, resetting expectations for frictionless commerce, Thales Europe Region SVP Cyril Villemin writes in a new PYMNTS eBook, “2025’s Over/Under: The Bets That Paid Off.” Digital wallets were on issuers’ roadmaps, but Apple Pay’s exponential adoption and eCommerce scale reset payment expectations, making frictionless, tokenized payments the standard and laying the […]The post eCommerce Growth Makes Tokenized Checkout the Baseline appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Snap positioned artificial intelligence (AI) as the core lever for improving advertiser performance and driving more profitable growth during the fourth-quarter earnings call. The company said it is embedding AI end to end across its advertising platform, from creative development to campaign delivery and optimization, with a focus on direct-response outcomes and return on […]The post Snap Embeds AI Across Ad Platform appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

Ahead of the Sunday (Feb. 8) Super Bowl, the venue in Santa Clara, California, was outfitted with technology to combat cyber threats, boost Wi-Fi capacity and power a “massive” 4K videoboard, Reuters reported Wednesday (Feb. 4). For cybersecurity, the NFL set up a cyber command center within the stadium and manned it with the […]The post Super Bowl Lineup Includes Cybersecurity Squad, Wireless Routers and Data Centers appeared first on PYMNTS.com.

When Alphabet outlined plans on its fourth quarter earnings call Wednesday (Feb. 4) to invest between $175 billion and $185 billion in capital expenditures during 2026, the range seemed to be less about ambition than necessity. Management framed the commitment during the call with analysts as a direct response to sustained demand for artificial […]The post Alphabet Bets $185B on Gemini, Agentic Commerce and Enterprise AI appeared first on PYMNTS.com.