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The Making Of A Digital Subprime Marketplace

The recent government shutdown reminds us that many U.S. consumers live paycheck to paycheck and carry heavy debt loads. Yet digital marketplace platforms using sophisticated risk models provide new opportunities to reinvent the retail installment loan and serve such consumers — without charging interest fees. Marc Schneider, CEO and co-founder of Zebit, tells Karen Webster how he built such a marketplace and where he plans to take his model next.

PODCAST: Spend Management

Integrating Payments Into The Workflow — And The Workforce

The way businesses pay and are paid is ever-more intuitive, cued by the likes of Amazon and Uber. So it is — or should be — with corporate expense management for an increasingly tech-savvy, young and remote workforce. PEX Founder and CEO Toffer Grant tells Karen Webster how embedding payments into workflows via “implied approval" can save money, and grant the greatest gift of all to companies and workers: time.

Alphabet Q4 Earnings

Google Feels The Cost-Per-Click Squeeze In Q4

Google grew its ad business 20 percent in Q4, which helped drive a Q4 earnings beat for Alphabet. However, cost-per-click was down, which worried investors in the face of growing competition from Amazon. Details here, including CEO Sundar Pichai’s remarks on Google Home, Android and YouTube — and its increasingly connected ecosystem.

Why Humans Still Run Betterment’s AI-Powered Call Center

When it comes to upselling financial products, bots can assist, but humans still run the show, says Julia Lowd, director of customer operations at online investment company Betterment. In the latest Call Center Commerce Tracker, she discusses how the robo-advising platform is using AI automation to complement, rather than replace, human interaction.

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