Author: Art Ryan

The question confronting global enterprises today is no longer whether AI can make transactions faster or smarter, but whether it can make them trustworthy. “AI is starting to redefine the speed, scale and intelligence of how businesses interact and transact,” Vijay Mehta, EVP/GM of Global Solutions and Analytics at Experian, told PYMNTS during a discussion for the B2B Payments 2025 event hosted by PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster. “In the payment space, we’re seeing AI move from back-office automation to frontline decisioning where agents can negotiate, validate and execute,” Mehta added. As Webster framed it, “AI plays on both sides of creating trust and destroying trust.”…

The fraud landscape in payments is evolving faster than many financial institutions can adapt. For Matthew Pearce, vice president of Fraud Risk Management and Dispute Operations at i2c, artificial intelligence is the most valuable — and volatile — tool in that fight. As AI reshapes decisioning, regulators are scrutinizing how it’s used, and the pace of change could deliver an “October surprise” few banks see coming. “One of the biggest shifts this year is the accelerated enforcement of AI-driven credit decisioning regulations,” Pearce said, as part of the “What’s Next in Payments” series examining the surprises that may lurk in the final…

PayPal has struck a partnership with OpenAI to embed its digital wallet into ChatGPT. The arrangement will see PayPal adopt the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) to let users pay for items they find using the artificial intelligence (AI) startup’s flagship product, according to a Tuesday (Oct. 28) news release. In addition, PayPal says it will support payments processing for merchants leveraging OpenAI Instant Checkout. “Hundreds of millions of people turn to ChatGPT each week for help with everyday tasks, including finding products they love, and over 400 million use PayPal to shop,” PayPal CEO Alex Chriss said in the news release. “By partnering with OpenAI and adopting…

Kuala Lumpur Positions Itself as Southeast Asia’s Next AI Powerhouse Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — October 2025 — The World AI Show Malaysia 2025, the nation’s premier gathering of artificial intelligence leaders and innovators, is set to take place on October 28–29, 2025, uniting the region’s most influential minds in government, enterprise, and technology. Hosted by Trescon Global, the summit marks the Malaysian debut of the world-renowned World AI Show series, spotlighting the country’s emergence as a regional epicenter for AI adoption, investment, and policy innovation. With the theme “AI in Action: Powering Malaysia’s Cloud-First & Sustainable Digital Economy,” this year’s…

AI startup Anthropic has introduced an expansion of its Claude for Financial Services platform. This update includes an Excel add-in and new connectors to real-time market data and portfolio analytics, as well as new “pre-built Agent Skills” such as building discounted cash flow models and initiating coverage reports, the company wrote in a Monday (Oct. 27) blog post. “Claude is already widely used by leading banking, asset management, insurance and financial technology companies,” the post read. “It supports front-office tasks like client experience, middle-office tasks in underwriting, risk and compliance and back-office tasks like code modernization and legacy processes. With ongoing updates to our models…

Business payments/cash management company Bottomline is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) agent. The agent, set to roll out early next year, will be integrated into Bottomline’s Global Cash Management and Payments Hub, the company announced Monday (Oct. 27). The new offering is designed to provide finance leaders with conversational AI and predictive insights, transforming treasury workflows, enhancing cash visibility, and driving faster, smarter decision-making. “Bottomline’s AI agent, named Bea, is being designed to act as a digital team member in the office of the CFO, enabling treasurers, cash managers, and compliance professionals to interact daily with financial data using natural language,” the company said…

Pinterest announced on Monday new AI-powered upgrades to its boards to make them more personalized for users. These features include an AI-driven collage, “Styled for you,” that helps users create outfits from saved fashion Pins, and “Boards made for you,” which are personalized boards curated with AI. “Styled for you” collages allow users to combine different clothing and accessories to create new outfits tailored to their individual style preferences. By tapping an item in the collage, users can swipe through AI-recommended saved pins for mixing and matching. Pinterest is also testing “Boards made for you,” personalized boards curated from a blend of…

Qualcomm announced Monday (Oct. 27) a new line of processors designed to power artificial intelligence inside data centers, signaling a major expansion beyond its traditional mobile-chip business. The company said its AI200 and AI250 chips will help enterprises run large-scale AI applications such as chatbots, analytics engines and digital assistants more efficiently while reducing energy use. Qualcomm Introduces AI200 and AI250 The San Diego-based company said the AI200 will be available in 2026 and the AI250 in early 2027. The processors are built for the “inference” phase of AI, where trained models are put to work on real-world tasks rather than being…

Mastercard and PayPal are deepening their partnership to bring agentic AI transactions into the mainstream. Under the agreement, Mastercard’s Agent Pay platform will be integrated into PayPal’s branded checkout wallet. The move allows consumers using PayPal to make purchases guided by artificial intelligence assistants, with Mastercard providing the secure payment rails behind the scenes. The collaboration extends to PayPal’s millions of merchants and Mastercard’s co-branded credit and debit cards, creating a shared infrastructure for agent-driven commerce at global scale. PayPal will pilot Mastercard’s Agent Pay Acceptance Framework to ensure that AI-initiated payments meet common security and verification standards. The integration uses Mastercard’s tokenization…

Investors continued to pour capital into artificial intelligence startups this week, funding companies that build the infrastructure supporting the creation and deployment of advanced models and the applications those models power. Crusoe Energy Systems Powers AI Sustainably Crusoe Energy Systems led the month’s fundraising with a $1.38 billion round that pushed its valuation above $10 billion, according to Reuters. The Denver-based company operates large data centers designed specifically for AI workloads and powered in part by natural gas that would otherwise be burned off at oil sites. By converting this wasted energy into electricity for computing, Crusoe reduces emissions while cutting…

Mercor, which connects AI labs with domain experts for training their foundational AI models, has raised $350 million at a $10 billion valuation, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Felicis Ventures, which led the company’s previous $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation, is also leading this round. Existing investors Benchmark and General Catalyst, and new investor Robinhood Ventures also participated. TechCrunch reported in September that Mercor was in talks with investors to raise a Series C at a valuation of $10 billion, up from its target of $8 billion a few months prior. The company at the time told potential investors…

One of the most compelling updates this week came from a Harvard Business Review article “Designing a Successful Agentic AI System.” Its authors argue that agentic AI will only deliver value when companies redesign workflows around outcomes, not tasks, and rethink how humans and intelligent systems collaborate. The authors describe agentic AI as a “team of digital colleagues” capable of autonomous reasoning, planning and coordination across departments, freeing organizations from the limits of rules-based automation. Case studies from Hitachi Digital, NTT DATA and Bigblue show how these systems can rewire complex operations by turning fragmented, multi-system environments into seamless, outcome-driven workflows. To…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fueling American economic growth, though its effect on employment is limited. That’s according to a recent report from the Bank of America (BofA) Institute, which finds that AI-related capital expenditures, especially in software and computing, were key drivers of GDP growth or 2025. “After a slight decline in Q1, GDP growth rebounded in Q2 with 3.8% for an annualized rate of 1.6% in 1H,” the report said. “One major reason for the resiliency in growth to date is the investment being poured into technology- and AI-related categories.” And while there have been fears that AI could cause steep job losses, the report found…

SoftBank has reportedly taken another step toward completing its massive $30 billion investment in OpenAI. The Japanese conglomerate’s board has greenlit a second installment of $22.5 billion restructuring that would set the stage for an eventual public offering, The Information reported Saturday (Oct. 25), citing a source with knowledge of the decision. The report noted that this approval indicates SoftBank’s expectation that OpenAI will prevail in that effort, through which it will turn into a public benefit corporation. SoftBank had said in April that it could reduce its planned investment in OpenAI if the company didn’t carry out its restructuring by the end of…

This month, researchers from AI Impacts and the universities of Oxford and Bonn released what has become the largest survey to date of artificial intelligence (AI) experts, offering a rare view into how the people building artificial intelligence systems perceive their pace, power and risks. Published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, the study asked 2,778 authors who had presented at top AI conferences to forecast milestones such as human-level performance and full automation of labor. Human-Level AI May Arrive Decades Earlier Than Expected The survey found a dramatic shift in how experts perceive the timeline for advanced artificial intelligence. Researchers gave…

Artificial intelligence is making its deepest inroads yet into the legal profession. It is turning pilot-scale experimentation into production-level automation. From research and contracting to compliance and billing, AI systems are becoming embedded infrastructure in law firms and in-house operations. Investors are taking notice. Funding to legal technology startups has already surpassed $2.4 billion in 2025. This is the highest annual total on record, according to Crunchbase. The surge reflects confidence that automation can relieve the sector’s document-heavy workloads. It can also unlock new operating leverage for firms. From Pilots to Infrastructure What began as narrow pilots in document review has…

OpenAI is working on a new tool that would generate music based on text and audio prompts, according to a report in The Information. Such a tool could be used to add music to existing videos, or to add guitar accompaniment to an existing vocal track, sources said. It’s not clear when OpenAI plans to launch such a tool or whether it would be available as a standalone product (as opposed to integrating with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and video app Sora). One source told The Information that OpenAI is working with some students from the Juilliard School to annotate scores as a way…

Valthos said Friday (Oct. 24) that it has raised $30 million to build “next-generation biodefense” to combat the threat of biological threats enabled by artificial intelligence. This kind of defense is needed because AI has expanded access to biotechnologies that can create diseases as well as eliminate them, the company said in a Friday blog post. “Today, it’s faster to weaponize biology than to advance new cures,” Valthos said in its post. “Leaders in AI have identified this as one of the largest threats of our time.” Valthos is building tools that government and life sciences experts can use to identify biological…

As demand for artificial intelligence (AI) training large models rises, traditional providers such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud are facing limits in available capacity. A group of smaller infrastructure firms known as “neoclouds” has started to fill that gap. These companies lease clusters of graphics processing units, or GPUs, to AI developers and enterprises that need computing resources on short notice. Rather than offering full software platforms, they specialize in the raw compute that powers AI systems. Training and deploying modern AI models requires far more computing power than most data centers were built to handle. Each GPU draws substantial…

OpenAI has acquired Software Applications Inc., an AI startup founded by former Apple engineers who helped build the iPhone’s Shortcuts app, according to Bloomberg. The deal strengthens OpenAI’s effort to make ChatGPT more interactive by integrating it directly with users’ computers, enabling the model to perform tasks beyond text-based prompts. The startup’s flagship tool, Sky for Mac, is a desktop assistant that lets users control software through natural language and visual context. The system can identify what appears on screen and execute actions like opening files, drafting messages or navigating apps. OpenAI said the company’s dozen employees will join its ChatGPT…