Sears And Amazon — Take Two | Alibaba’s Car Vending Machine | Consumers Deck The Malls With Buying

“Omnichannel” has been a buzzword for years, but only recently has it begun to mean more than simply “adding digital channels.” Now, it’s about connecting those channels to each other and to brick-and-mortar stores. A few standout retailers are leading this charge, but one major category is lagging: luxury retail. Maya Mikhailov, CMO of the startup GPShopper, has an idea why, but also a word of caution for these brands: if they don’t meet customers where they’re shopping on the digital landscape, other brands surely will — and many already have. Read More...

We've been saying all along that it's time tokill the check. In our long-standing series on push payments, the myriad use cases illustrated by Ingo Money and others illuminated the lures of getting paid on demand — especially for hourly workers, as Walmart has introduced. Plus: Santa may fizzle under the weight of backed up packages with Christmas Eve falling on a Sunday, and one initial coin offering (ICO) gets ICE-d. Read More...

Change was in the air in 2017. Industry experts in every corner of the payments world characterized it as a year of disruption and evolution, with tradition giving way to the financial landscape of the future. Digital saw fantastic growth — but digital security concerns also grew by leaps and bounds along with it. We asked 30 of the most innovative minds in payments to tell us what the “Year of 2017” in payments meant to them. Here’s what they told us. Read More...