EBA Clearing and The Clearing House are working with Swift to speed up and lower the cost of cross-border payments.

Walmart’s GoLocal delivery service will need smaller customers to be sustainable: The Home Depot is a good start, but it’s big enough that it’s likely to take delivery in-house in the near future.

Service providers are using their existing relationships with small businesses to move into financial services, taking on financial institutions by offering solutions like lending and bank accounts that are powered by partnerships, digital banking developments, and even in-house banks.

The White House called on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to move ahead with data-sharing regulation— its adoption would make it easier for neobanks to become customers’ primary banks and help all banking players partner with fintechs.

Even as the U.S. starts to open up again, consumers are still shopping online, and Shopify, a leading commerce platform that lets merchants manage their online retail operations in-house, is well positioned to capture the growing online market as it continues to strike new partnerships.

Lastly, following its acquisition of the Quibi and “This Old House” libraries, Roku signed an exclusive deal with Saban Films to stream its movies on The Roku Channel three months after they appear in theaters. These moves show that, for a growing number of streaming services, original content production is becoming essential. Read Next.

Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments are the second most popular B2B payment option with a share of 39.2% in 2020, reaching above $10 trillion for the first time. Card payments took a hit in 2020 with a decline of approximately 5%, which lead to a payment value of $1.434 trillion. We expect this payment type will rebound in 2021 and end up taking a 6.0% share of overall B2B payments.

The Clearing House highlighted using APIs, which are “a more secure and flexible alternative mechanism” for sharing data with third parties.

Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments quickly gained steam in 2020. ACH payments volume increased 7.7% year over year (YoY) in 2020—much faster than 2019’s 1.8% YoY growth. The share of check payments fell substantially, reflecting the shift to digital payments in recent years. But ACH growth accelerated in 2020 as the pandemic exacerbated the need to access funds faster.

Citi Verify lets billers validate customer bank account details in real time—helping ensure compliance with rules set by the National Automated Clearing House Association (Nacha). Request for Pay (RfP), a standardized Automated Clearing House (ACH) network message, lets billers send electronic invoices to customers, who can then initiate near-real-time payments.

How we got here: The bill initially received significant pushback in the House, and its passing was initially contingent on a separate $1.8 trillion economic package. However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recommended that Congress make the infrastructure bill independent of the economic agenda, which requires official cost estimates that can take two weeks to process.

This dynamic is bolstered by the numerous media conglomerates running house ads on their TV networks to promote their affiliated streaming products. In H1 2021, streaming services ran $845.6 million worth of TV ads, up from $572.5 million in H1 2020, per iSpot.tv. Most of these ads ran on affiliated networks (e.g., ABC running ads for Disney+, and Discovery Channel running ads for Discovery+).

The opportunity: Lithium-ion battery producers have a window of opportunity to cater to Toyota and competing automotive companies while they ramp up in-house battery production. While there’s a risk in outsourcing battery production, it still remains a viable option to get more EVs out the gate earlier.

Suzy earned her MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and prior to that was an in-house public relations executive for five years.

A sprawling bill of this size could still face significant pushback in the House. It also remains to be seen which of these projects will be prioritized, especially given the bipartisan nature of the bill, and differing priorities across party lines. Broadband for all is a topic both parties can get behind, which is also a transformative White House goal—making it a top funding priority.

SMB credit card fintech Brex, for example, revealed a dashboard that houses solutions like bill pay and spend management in April and launched a lending product in August. And SMB lender Kabbage moved into neobank territory with a high-yield checking account.

As large firms both ramp up investments in and struggle to digitize, B2B fintechs that can provide white-label solutions or the infrastructure to build them in-house will attract funding. And several recent venture capital war chests focused on fintechs—including Ribbit Capital’s $1.5 billion pot—also augur elevated investment in the sector.

The Build Back Better bill recently passed the House, although its future in Senate remains unclear. If this version passes, it will provide $4.75 billion for IRS business systems modernization and at least $500 million in funding for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

Partnering with in-house teams, agencies, and technology vendors. Developing process efficiencies to improve insights, drive business growth, and accelerate innovation. Presenters:. Ally Schnitzer is manager, North America media and data at PepsiCo.