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There was a decline in initial claims for unemployment together with an increase in insured employment last week.
Observers said this combination reflected a continuation of a “no hire, no fire” labor market.
During the week ended Saturday (Dec. 20), there were 214,000 initial claims, a figure that was 10,000 lower than the 224,000 reported the previous week, the Department of Labor...
China UnionPay has launched a mobile app designed to provide one-stop digital services for foreign visitors to China.
The Nihao China app offers services related to payment, transportation, daily life and cultural tourism, the company said in a Wednesday (Dec. 24) press release.
“The launch of the ‘Nihao China’ app is an important innovation of China UnionPay in the field of cross-...
Snowflake is reportedly in talks to acquire Observe for about $1 billion to expand its range of artificial intelligence (AI) offerings.
A deal would add Observe’s observability tools for monitoring applications, including AI apps, to Snowflake’s product portfolio that includes database technology and AI that handles IT tickets, customer service and other workplace tasks, The...
The number and value of acquisitions and initial public offerings (IPOs) in the cryptocurrency sector surged in 2025, driven by the Trump administration’s favorable stance toward the industry.
The number of acquisitions saw a year-over-year increase of 18%, reaching 267, the Financial Times reported Tuesday (Dec. 23), citing data from PitchBook.
Notable deals included Coinbase’s $2.9...
Amazon is moving quickly to contain a new threat to its eCommerce dominance as AI-powered shopping bots begin to reshape how consumers discover and buy products online.
The company is blocking third-party artificial intelligence (AI) shopping tools from accessing its site even as it explores partnerships and builds its own AI-driven buying experiences, underscoring the high stakes for...
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly embedding itself into the core decision-making systems of modern businesses, from pricing and marketing to supply chain management and customer targeting. As AI tools move from experimental add-ons to operational infrastructure, regulators on both sides of the Atlantic are focusing on how algorithmic decision-making could reshape competition, sometimes in...
By year-end, one conclusion from PYMNTS Intelligence’s The Certainty Project series is hard to miss: Uncertainty rarely arrives as a single shock.
It compounds, as we saw this year, jumping from cyber risk to payment fraud to shifting trade rules. Then it shows up in the most practical places, like delayed tech rollouts, higher supplier prices, thinner margins and consumers trading...
If 2025 felt like the year the future stopped “arriving” and started showing up in production, you are not imagining it. In payments and commerce, the most important shifts rarely announce themselves with a single product launch. They surface in how executives describe their constraints, their adversaries and their non-negotiables. What follows is a guided tour through some of those moments...
The holiday shopping period compresses weeks of spending into days, multiplies the number of online interactions, and makes consumers and companies vulnerable to fraudsters.
That anxiety is not theoretical. PYMNTS reported in early December that 78% of shoppers worry about a holiday fraud surge. When the majority of consumers already expect trouble, it is a signal of how much seasonal...
For cryptocurrency markets, 2025 was a year that went full circle.
Digital assets are ending the year with nearly all of their gains over the past 12 months having been erased by market volatility.
However, focusing on crypto’s cyclical booms and busts misses the broader picture of the past year. The narrative of 2025 wasn’t one of out-and-out bullish price action or retail mania, or...