Nvidia Corp.’s stock has rallied so much this year that it’s now threatening to overtake Amazon.com Inc. to become the fourth most valuable US company. Having added nearly Tesla Inc.’s entire market capitalization in the past two months alone, Nvidia is worth $1.74 trillion, just shy of Amazon at $1.77 trillion. Google-owner Alphabet, the third…

Buy now, pay later provider Affirm reduced overall operating expenses for the fourth consecutive quarter as operational efficiency and consumer growth remained a priority.  Tech and data analytics spend, which totaled $59 million during the quarter, was down 32% year over year, according to Affirm’s earnings supplement for the fiscal second quarter, which ended Dec.…

Banks are identifying uses for generative AI and finding ways to make it effective and responsible.  According to a Dec. 11 report by consulting giant EY, 100% of respondents said they are either already using or plan to use generative AI within their institutions. The report surveyed 300 executive directors, managing directors or higher at…

Maria Mason, enterprise product manager at Citizens Bank, will speak at Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 about strategies for automating real-time payments.  Bank Automation Summit U.S. 2024 takes place March 18-19 at the Omni Nashville in Nashville, Tenn., and brings together industry experts to discuss innovation in real-time payments, AI, RPA and more.  View the…

Vitalik Buterin, the guy who created Ethereum cryptocurrency and smart contracts, blogged the other day about what happens when AI and blockchain collide. Funnily enough, that’s the theme of my new book Intelligent Money. Vitalik cites four major areas where blockchain and AI will make a difference, and each has different ramifications. The focal point……

Things we’re reading today include: ‘Trendy’ Monzo now feels like a children’s bank – I’m leaving for Barclays (telegraph.co.uk) JPMorgan Survey Shows Over Half of Institutional Traders Don’t Want Crypto Exposure (coindesk.com) Fintech engineer grounded by crypto fraud caper • The Register Group pretends to be dead outside Southampton bank branch (yahoo.com) Philip Hammond had……

Could 2024 be the year for fintech IPOs? Quite possibly, according to F-Prime Capital’s State of Fintech 2024 report. F-Prime — a VC firm with over $4.5 billion in assets under management that tracks the performance of emerging, publicly traded and privately held financial technology companies — naturally remains bullish on the fintech space, noting that:…

PayPal will invest in a new app to launch in 2024 alongside a new strategy to drive engagement with better consumer experiences like AI-driven shopping.  “Redesigning our app and creating improved, frictionless onboarding paths are tangible ways that we plan to drive higher penetration,” Chief Executive Alex Chriss said during PayPal’s fourth-quarter earnings call. Chriss…

Industrywide, financial institutions are seeing an uptick in synthetic identities, scam activity and check fraud even as digital channel adoption grows.   In fact, check fraud is expected to reach $24 billion in 2024, according to a Jan. 3 newsletter from Frank McKenna, chief strategist for AI-driven fraud detection platform Point Predictive. As consumers lean into…

We need global regulation of all technology … but can we? Building on yesterday’s piece, there is a call in many circles for the global regulation of Big Tech. In fact it goes far further than Big Tech. It’s a call for regulating everything online. From cryptocurrencies to social media to artificial intelligence … it……