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The New Payment Ecosystem Driving Digital Marketplaces

The explosion of digital marketplaces across so many consumer and business sectors—and now across dozens of countries—represents a growing economic opportunity: In the US alone, by 2020, total B2B ecommerce sales are predicted to hit $1.1 trillion and will account for more than 12% of total B2B sales. Just as Netflix, Spotify, Birchbox and Dollar Shave Club helped validate the concept of subscription marketplaces in the consumer world, an emergent class of B2B marketplaces are proving to be the next growth catalysts. That group includes both software and marketplace platforms such as Uber, Airbnb, Etsy, QuickBooks, Mindbody, ServiceNow, and others. With big growth, however, come big challenges for the companies that operate these marketplaces. Chief among those is the orchestration of payments—and the ability to offer instant, seamless, and secure transactions no matter what currency, country, method of payment, physical location, or time of day. A rapidly expanding array of new payment platforms and methods are helping these marketplaces to scale—and, in turn, pushing us ever closer to the notion of a truly cashless economy. These new marketplaces don't just allow for the intersection of sellers and buyers, they also offer crowd-based applications that connect consumers to independent service providers. Add to that the complexities of B2B ecommerce itself—merchant onboarding, multi-currency processing, settlement and payout, and risk management—and it's easy to understand why it's taken a while for these models to emerge. A key enabler of this evolution is the expansion of new payment technologies that align with global commerce trends. As Carla Erlick, senior vice president, sales and business development, at Paysafe, explains, "Payment technology and methods have grown dramatically over the past 5 years, and the introduction of mobile payments, wallets, tokenization and other key enablers are creating a level playing field. Access to new payment and software technologies have improved speed to market and general adoption, making it easier for new platforms to compete with the established players." This new payment ecosystem is beginning to emerge globally—driven by rapidly changing customer expectations for services, advancing trends in fintech, regulatory changes, and a continual increase in payment-enabling technologies.

Hotdogs, emoji and faces: How AI is learning to see

If you've noticed a huge surge in companies saying they're using artificial intelligence lately, you aren't alone. Even simple-sounding tech is suddenly "built on AI", such as the hotdog identifier Not Hotdog or Google's Allo chat app, which turns selfies into custom emoji.