(This article originally appeared in Forbes)
1 -Mastercard is joining the crowded BNPL market with its new feature.
This past week, Mastercard revealed that it will be launching a new BNPL (buy now, pay later) feature to customers living in Australia, the UK, and the US. The feature- known as Mastercard Installments- will let fintechs, wallets, lenders, and banks provide a flexible option for users in the form of installments. Sometime soon, Mastercard plans to make this feature available to additional locations as well. (Source: Silicon Republic)
Why this is important for your business:
BNPL has become a significant trend this year with many financing and credit card companies offering these services to both retailers and B2B firms looking to provide longer term financing options for their customers. Sometimes people don’t want to — or can’t — pay with credit cards and they don’t have cash. BNPL fills that niche and could be a good service to provide your customers too.
2 — The enterprise AI platform Leena AI raised $30M to be a ‘Siri for employees’.
Conversational platform Leena AI, recently raised $30 million in funding. The AI-powered platform is already used by big corporations such as P&G, Coca-Cola, and Nestle, but helps both small and large companies use chatbot-style technology to automate conversations. Leena
AI has started to focus more on HR teams- however- who are using the platform to automate employee help similar to Siri, negating the need for a traditional help desk or number. (Source: Venture Beat)
Why this is important for your business:
Look for more voice automated, conversational technology to enter the small business workplace over the next few years. The applications will range from generating reports and invoices from a worker’s command to providing help and assistance to both employees and customers in a store or business.
3 — Google published a best practices guide for ecommerce.
Google recently published a new guide for ecommerce focusing on best practices. Although the new addition is geared toward developers, it is helpful for anybody involved in selling items online. (Source: Search Engine Journal)
Why this is important for your business:
The guide contains seven new pages that focus on topics such as sharing product data, launching a new ecommerce website, where on Google ecommerce content can show up, the impact of page loading, and more.
4-BitPay and Verifone are bringing crypto to the brick-and-mortar POS.
Crypto service company BitPay and payment tech platform Verifone recently announced their partnership which will help merchants support crypto, allowing consumers to increase their use of the digital currency. (Source: Pymnts)
Why this is important for your business:
According to the announcement, business owners will not have to set up a BitPay account and will be able to use Verifone to directly accept crypto payments. The cryptos that will be initially accepted will be U.S. dollar pegged stablecoins, bitcoin cash, dogecoin, ethereium, and bitcoin.
5 — A raven takes out a Google drone.
Check out the video here.
Why this is important for your business:
Drone deliveries will become more popular, but there are still big challenges. And not just from regulators! The drone company insisted that the delivery was ultimately completed, and a spokesperson assured us that the drones have “multiple redundancies to help ensure safe operations in the event that something like this occurs.” Yeah, right. Raven 1. Drone 0.
