Salesforce is reportedly laying off 700 employees, or about 1% of its workforce.The cuts are being made across the company, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Friday (Jan. 26), citing an unnamed source.Salesforce did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.The company still has 1,000 jobs open, suggesting this is a routine adjustment of the workforce and Salesforce aims to redirect its spending to other areas, according to the report.Salesforce laid off 8,000 employees, or 10% of its staff, ...

Card delinquencies and charge-offs offer evidence of consumers struggling to meet their financial obligations.Credit card balances and delinquencies have been rising as consumer spending remains strong, but government support drops from pandemic levels, with all stages of delinquency approaching their highest levels of the past decade-plus.Delinquencies occur when borrowers fail to make payments on their debts by the due date. A delinquency is essentially a late payment.The next step after a delinquency is ...

Is this year gearing up for another round of slashing costs and seizing revenue opportunities? Signs from retail giants Amazon and Walmart point in that direction. But the burning question is: How will these moves hit consumers? According to a recent PYMNTS report, consumers expect a reduction in the inflation rate in the upcoming months and years. Nevertheless, they are adjusting their spending plans, suggesting a potential inclination to rebuild their savings. This presents a combination of signals for me ...

The rise of digital retail subscriptions has provided consumers with convenience such as scheduled deliveries of regularly used items, eliminating the need for frequent trips to physical stores.Millennials are at the forefront of this trend, with 39% of them relying on subscriptions for most or all of their shopping needs. This generation values convenience and personalized experiences, making them more likely to adopt digital retail subscriptions.According to the PYMNTS Intelligence study “The Replenish Ec ...

Visa’s fiscal first quarter results pointed to continued growth in consumer spending — particularly on travel — though growth rates are slowing.Management, however, noted that growth rates in new payments flows and value-added services are outpacing the transaction growth seen in credit and debit conduits.Investors sent the shares down about 3% after hours.The company’s latest earnings supplementals and commentary from the Thursday (Jan. 25) conference call show that overall payments volume increased 8% in ...

Card delinquencies and charge-offs offer evidence of consumers struggling to meet their financial obligations.And credit card balances and delinquencies have been rising as consumer spending remains strong, but government support is dropping from pandemic levels, with all stages of delinquency approaching their highest levels of the past decade-plus. Delinquencies occur when borrowers fail to make payments on their debts by the due date. A delinquency is essentially a late payment.The next step after a deli ...

The Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry into investments and partnerships in the generative artificial intelligence sector.The regulator has ordered Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI to provide information about these activities as it investigates the impact these relationships may have on the competitive landscape, the FTC said in a Thursday (Jan. 25) press release.The inquiry aims to ensure that companies that are developing and monetizing AI are not using t ...

Peacock is seeing rapid growth, leveraging exclusive sports content to drive adoption in the face of stiff competition in the streaming space.The streaming platform’s parent company, Comcast, reported in its fourth-quarter 2023 financial results that Peacock experienced significant growth in paid subscribers and revenue. The streaming platform saw a nearly 50% increase in paid subscribers compared to the prior year period, reaching 31 million subscribers, and revenue shot up by 57% year over year, marking t ...

PayPal is introducing what it terms a “reimagined checkout experience” that will reduce checkout times by as much as 50%. In addition, it’s using artificial intelligence (AI) to craft personalized recommendations to consumers and has also announced cash-back offerings that CEO Alex Chriss said will “revolutionize commerce.”The half-dozen products and services, announced Thursday (Jan. 25) are in the pilot phases, with larger rollouts slated for later in the year.Faster CheckoutsThe company’s “Fastlane” serv ...

Months after investing in Hugging Face, Google has launched a partnership with the artificial intelligence (AI) firm.The collaboration will let developers use Google Cloud infrastructure for all Hugging Face services, while also allowing for the training of Hugging Face AI models on Google Cloud, the companies announced in a news release Thursday (Jan. 25). “The partnership advances Hugging Face’s mission to democratize AI and furthers Google Cloud’s support for open source AI ecosystem development,” the re ...