Amazon


Whole Foods Market Reports Breach

On Sept. 28, Whole Foods Market announced it had recently received information regarding unauthorized access of payment card data used at certain venues such as taprooms and table-service restaurants located within some of its stores.

Alexa Is Making ‘Her’ Presence Known

While Google is doing its impression of a petulant child, storming home from the park with its football tucked under its arm by barring Amazon Echo Show access to YouTube, Amazon has drafted a host of reinforcements for its Alexa offensive.

Did Apple Just Reinvent Retail Again?

Forget facial scans or a watch that’s not tethered to the phone. If you’re a bank or payments company, you’d best be looking at Apple’s plans for the transformation of retail.

Alexa Speaks to U.S. Bank Customers

More than a year after Capital One unveiled the feature, U.S. Bank customers still are among the first in the U.S. to be able to complete banking tasks, such as checking an account balance or paying a credit card bill, by speaking a command to an Amazon Alexa device.

Walmart Taps Google for Omnichannel Commerce Play

Google and Walmart are teaming up to take on Amazon (and Alexa) with voice-activated commerce and more plans for 2018. Starting in late September, the retail giant will be working with Google to offer hundreds of thousands of items for voice shopping via Google Assistant.

Are You Protected from Contact Center Fraud?

Payments companies are used to defending themselves against fraud from all sorts of angles, but they would do well to mind the phones. By 2020, 75 percent of omni-channel, customer-facing companies will face a targeted attack, with the contact center as the primary point of compromise, according to Gartner research.

Walmart Pushes Omnichannel Shopping with New Tech Incubator

Walmart recently announced another step toward further developing its e-commerce business with the creation of a technology incubator called Store No. 8 to create new retail online businesses as well as help the retail giant better compete against Amazon.com.

Cleo Chatbot Comes to Facebook Messenger

The rise of the chat bots continues as Cleo, a virtual money assistant described by its creators as the “Siri of personal finance,” has launched on Facebook Messenger for users in the U.K. Developed by the London-based fintech startup of the same name, Cleo is an artificial-intelligence-powered chat bot the companies say will help users manage their finances.