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Upstart announced the launch of its T-Prime lending program. This new initiative in the Upstart Referral Network is designed to enable CUs to reach America’s more affluent “super prime” borrowers.
CPI’s All-in-One Card Technology Debuts
CPI Card Group is launching fresh card technology that reduces the amount of first-use plastics while providing issuers new formats and shapes for their credit, debit, and prepaid cards. Their All-in-One technology uses the Secora Pay Green technology developed in partnership with Infineon Technologies. They claim that the technology allows the use of recyclable materials with card bodies made of up to 100% recycled materials.
FICO announced a new analytic tool for mortgage professionals, the FICO Score Mortgage Simulator. The new tool simulates the potential impacts to a member’s FICO Score with various simulated changes to their credit report data, such as reducing credit card balances or deleting a collection account.
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HPE, Dell Launch Another Round of AI Servers
HPE’s new HPE ProLiant Compute XD685 uses AMD’s newly launched 5th generation Epyc processors and Instinct MI325X accelerators to support natural language processing, LLMs, and multi-modal AI training. The XD685 has a modular 5U chassis, which supports a wide combination of GPUs, CPUs, and it offers both air cooling and direct liquid cooling. Meanwhile, Dell is offering a series of new PowerEdge servers including the PowerEdge XE9712 and the PowerEdge M7725.
As PC, chip, and other component makers unveil products tailored to generative artificial intelligence (genAI) needs on edge devices, users can expect to see far more task automation and copilot-like assistants embedded on desktops and laptops next year. PC and chip manufacturers — including AMD, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Intel, and Nvidia — have all been touting AI PC innovations to come over the next year or so.
Cisco Unveils AI Server, ‘Pods’ to Simplify AI Infrastructure Deployments
Cisco announced a more powerful member of its Unified Computing System (UCS) family, the UCS C885A M8. The 8U rack server is built on Nvidia’s HGX platform and designed to deliver the accelerated compute capabilities needed for AI workloads. Along with the new hardware, Cisco introduced AI Pods, which are preconfigured, validated, and optimized infrastructure packages that customers can plug into their data center or edge environments as needed. The Pods include Nvidia AI Enterprise, which features pretrained models and development tools for production-ready AI, and are managed through Cisco Intersight.
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Experian Launches New GenAI Solution
Experian announced the launch of Experian Assistant, a new generative AI-enabled solution that they claim greatly accelerates the modeling lifecycle, slashing model-development timelines. With Experian’s Ascend Analytical Sandbox, Experian Assistant helps organizations perform data exploration, build and deploy models, monitor their performance, and increase speed to market to launch new offerings.
Microsoft Joins Multi-AI Agent Fray with Magentic-One
Microsoft wants organizations to believe that its Magentic-One multi-AI agent system will enable them to automate complex tasks that previously required human intervention. Microsoft expects the generalist multi-agent system, which is also open, to be used for open-ended web and file-based tasks for now, but it aims to create a multi-agent system than can handle complex tasks involving reasoning. In action, Magentic-One has a multi-agent architecture in which one agent, the Orchestrator, directs four other agents to solve a given task.
Choosing AI: The 7 Categories Cybersecurity Decision-Makers Need to Understand
This article posits that security teams can split understanding of what constitutes AI decision support systems across seven categories — those that summarize, analyze, generate, extrapolate preferences, facilitate, implement, and find consensus. It goes on to explore each of these seven areas.
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Learn the 7 Shields of ATM Security
ATM security is a moving target that includes numerous items to defend against such as: Skimming, Shimming, Data relay, Explosives, Cash trapping, Denial of Service. Data breach, Ransomware and Host spoofing. To reply to all of these threats and others, the article proposes seven overall shields: 1) Collaboration; 2) Data security; 3) Cyber security; 4) Monitoring; 5) Compliance, processes; 6) Assessments; and 7) Physical security measures.
The Role of AI in Mobile App Security and Data Protection
Unlike traditional security methods that only react after a problem occurs, the author states that AI can predict and prevent attacks in real time. It can learn from patterns, spot unusual activity, and strengthen defenses so hackers have a harder time breaking in. This article delves into how AI transforms mobile app security and data protection, ensuring that users’ information remains secure in today’s digital world.
Visa Expands Push-to-Wallet for Virtual Cards Across Commercial Solutions Ecosystem
Visa announced that users can now push virtual cards to mobile wallet ecosystems including Apple Pay and Google Pay, with control and security that allows for precise spending limits and monitoring of transactions, thereby minimizing the risk of fraud and unauthorized expenditures. Virtual card transactions will exceed 121 billion globally by 2027, increasing 340% from 28 billion in 20221, according to Juniper Research.
The Transformative Power of Mobile-First Banking
In today’s mobile-first environment, effective communication hinges on selecting the right timing and delivery method. While push notifications are crucial for capturing attention, in-app messaging offers a more nuanced and thoughtful approach to user engagement, according to the author. She is convinced that in-app messages are ideal for important but not necessarily urgent communications. She concludes that when it comes to pursuing high-priority or urgent requests, pairing push notifications with in-app messaging offers a more effective, strategic approach to reaching the mobile bankers.
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The Threat from Synthetic Identity Fraud Remains Potent
The risk exposure to businesses from synthetic identity fraud totaled $3.2 billion during the first half of 2024—an all-time high, and up from $3 billion during the same period a year ago, says TransUnions’s “H2 2024 Update” to its State of Omnichannel Fraud Report. Criminals actively used synthetic identities to open FI- and retailer-issued credit cards and take out auto and unsecured personal loans. The share of accounts opened across those four categories by criminals using synthetic identities rose 18% year-over-year in the first half of 2024, according to the report. As this type of fraud increases, criminals often look to recycle a synthetic identity that has been successfully used to open a new account through a technique called credit washing. Credit washing is a credit-manipulation scam intended to wipe out negative information from an identity’s credit history by making a false claim of identity fraud.
AuthenticID Releases Identity Verification Platform AuthenticID360
AuthenticID announced the release of AuthenticID360, its new holistic identity verification platform. AuthenticID360 combines ID verification, biometric authentication, KYC (Know Your Customer) and KYB (Know Your Business) data checks, OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) sanction screening, and advanced fraud watchlists tools. The company claims that their solution is the industry’s complete 2 second verification platform, processing the front and back of a government-issued ID, biometric verification, and KYC data checks in that timeframe.
Fortinet Launches Its First Standalone Endpoint DLP Product
Fortinet is expanding its data loss prevention (DLP) capabilities with the launch of its new AI-powered FortiDLP products. The FortiDLP platform provides automated data movement tracking, cloud application monitoring and endpoint protection mechanisms that work both online and offline. The system deploys machine learning at the endpoint level, enabling continuous data monitoring without constant network connectivity. The platform implements origin-based data protection, tracking data movement from endpoints and unmanaged mobile devices to external destinations including USB drives, printers, and cloud applications.
Federal Reserve Financial Services' New FedDetect Offering Tackles Commercial Check Fraud
Federal Reserve Financial Services announced the expansion of FedDetect Duplicate Notification for Check Services to include commercial checks, alongside its existing Treasury check notification service. FIs can now see deposit information and images of potential duplicate items for commercial checks, supplementing their existing check fraud mitigation tools.
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Technology and Marketing
Research Finds Tremendous Opportunity for Credit Providers to Rethink Consumer Loyalty
Marqueta's research found that among people surveyed, credit card loyalty is close to nonexistent, economic uncertainty is leading to more people struggling to pay their credit card bills, and that people have high expectations for what a credit card can provide, but they’re not getting their needs met. However, the nearly three quarters of consumers who said they were satisfied with their credit card still said they plan to apply for a new card in the next year, and almost half of 18-43 year olds surveyed in the US plan to apply for a credit card in the next 12 months. Even people without plans to apply for a card could be swayed by the right offer. Eighty percent of US 18-43 year olds who had no plans on applying for a card reported that the right feature or reward could get them to apply for a new card, including cash back of $100 or more, 0% interest rate the first year, or a major points sign-up bonus.
How to Deploy AI to Build Essential Marketing Collateral
This article recommends that marketers begin their AI journey giving their AI tool, such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini, material about their campaign, so it has specific knowledge it can use. Most models will allow you to upload a PDF or Word file. This easy process creates your knowledge base which will be used for building your collateral. It then goes on to lay out tips for effectively directing an AI campaign as well as advanced AI usage.
Emotional AI in Banking: Next-Gen Personalization or Privacy Killer?
The author states that the future of banking promises to be more personalized and more invasive than ever before. He is convinced that as AI and emotional analytics advance, sooner or later FIs will start to explore ways to assess and respond to their accountholders’ emotional states. He goes on to discuss the next frontier of user experience (UX) in financial services, where emotions will play a critical role in decision-making and product offerings.
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The CFPB Releases Its Data Privacy Rule for Open Banking
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has finalized its personal financial data-rights rule aimed at governing the sharing of consumer data through open banking. The new rule will require FIs, credit card issuers, and other financial providers to share data at a consumer’s direction with companies offering competing products. As a result, consumers will be able to access, or authorize third-party access to, such data as transaction information, account balances. information needed to initiate payments, upcoming bill payments, and “basic account verification” data. Financial-services providers will be required to make such information available free of charge to consumers. The new rule also establishes privacy protections for consumers by requiring that personal financial data can only be used for the purposes requested by the consumer. Third parties are prohibited from using consumer data against a consumer’s wishes for other purposes.
Mastercard Launches Tokenized Card-Based Bill Pay Solution
Mastercard launched a new card-based bill pay solution for merchants, acquirers, payment facilitators and payment service providers. Bill Qkr features tokenization that allows cards to be securely stored on a merchant’s site for recurring payments, secure updates that keep future transactions flowing smoothly by providing a new token when the card expires, and Click to Pay that facilitates guest checkout. Billers can automatically submit ongoing invoices for fixed, recurring payments, and can streamline consumers’ use of saved payments credentials for bills that change month-to-month.
Mastercard Unveils Open Banking 'Command Center'
Mastercard has unveiled a set of tools designed to make it easy for people to manage how they share their financial data with third parties. Connect Plus is a data-consent command center that offers people control of where, how and with whom their financial data is shared. Within one digital web application, individuals can search for and link their accounts, view which third-parties have consent to access that account’s data and grant and revoke consent in real time.
3 Lessons for FIs Implementing a Maturing FedNow
Roughly one year following the launch of FedNow, many FIs are in the process of implementing the payment rail in their organizations. This article highlights the following use cases in instant payments that may be most applicable to FIs and their account holders: 1) P2P (person to person) – payments between friends and family or for informal services; 2) B2B (business to business) – transactions between businesses; 3) C2B (consumer to business) – consumer bill pay, ecommerce and funding investment accounts; and 4) B2C (business to consumer) – payment requests, refunds, insurance claims, payroll, loan distributions and investment distributions.
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Fastly DDoS Protection Blocks Malicious Traffic
Fastly released Fastly DDoS Protection to help provide automatic protection from Layer 7 and other application-level DDoS attacks. They say that their solution allows customers to uphold resilience against disruptive, distributed attacks at scale by layering proprietary Attribute Unmasking techniques along with other layer 7 DDoS mitigation strategies like caching. Attribute Unmasking helps identify anomalous characteristics for attacks, offering what they claim is faster, more adaptive protections than outdated approaches like rigid rate-limiting policies and centralized scrubbing centers.
A10 Networks Tackles AI Threats with Platform Updates
A10 Networks is updating its platforms in a bid to help organizations deal with increasing risks, including those that might come from AI-driven attacks. Among the updates are an enhanced version of the company’s Advanced Core Operating System (ACOS) and an AI-powered bot protection capability. There are also improvements to the company’s Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) services, as well as a new management technology called A10 Control for centralized management of network infrastructure.
Sectigo SiteLock 2.0 Simplifies Website Protection for SMBs
Sectigo announced SiteLock 2.0, a major upgrade to SiteLock, its website security and protection platform. They say that their solution goes beyond traditional vulnerability scanning by consolidating multiple security scans and metrics to generate a single, easy-to-understand score that reflects the overall health of a site. Its algorithm calculates a site’s health score, incorporating factors such as malware detection, vulnerability scanning, SSL certificate status and product configuration.
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6 Undervalued Call Center Metrics
The author goes into a fairly in-depth discussion on what he believes are six undervalued call center metrics: 1. Containment rate; 2. Agent redundancy rate; 3. Average speed of answer (ASA); 4. Contact rate; 5. Average after call work time (ACW); and 6. Employee engagement.
5 Things to Consider Before Investing in a Chatbot
At its core, a chatbot is a simple text communication tool, and is only as good as the systems built around it. But for the chatbot to be effective, it has to take into account external factors, and be properly implemented. This article looks at five chatbot considerations to cover before investing in a system.
Cisco’s New AI Agents and Assistants Aim to Ease Service Headaches
Cisco is angling to be a leader in AI-powered call center support. Case in point: they recently introduced new Webex AI agents and assistants that will work alongside humans to streamline contact center processes and address common headaches and snag points. They claim that their Webex AI Agent, available in early 2025, will bring together conversational intelligence with generative AI to help improve self-service.
4 Key Features of an AI-First Contact Center
The author insists that we need to explore an AI-first contact center. He states that an AI-first contact center places AI at the core of consumer interactions simply because it is the only way to scale and overcome today’s challenges with the resources you have. He lays our four core features that you should look for in a contact center AI solution, as well as 4 benefits of an AI-first contact center.
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