3.17.17: Your morning briefing

Enjoy complimentary access to top ideas and insights — selected by our editors.

Welcome to the PaymentsSource Morning Briefing, delivered daily. The information you need to start your day, including top headlines from PaymentsSource and around the Web:

Alexa moves in with Siri: Amazon's shopping-focused digital assistant, Alexa, has arrived in the e-commerce giant's iPhone app, The Verge reports. Amazon has been steadily expanding its shopping capabilities to more devices via Alexa and its Dash buttons, but on the iPhone it won't be the default digital assistant. As The Verge notes, Alexa can access most of its standard features, including purchasing, from within the Amazon iOS app but it stops listening when the app closes — and Siri steps back in.

Luke MacGregor/Bloomberg

Starbucks in a Dash button: Starbucks' wildly successful mobile payment and ordering app has greatly streamlined the process of purchasing coffee at the company's stores, but could it be any simpler? Hacker Ryan Pickren thought so, and programmed an Amazon IoT button (an unbranded version of an Amazon Dash button) to place his usual order, TechCrunch reports. Amazon's WiFi-connected Dash buttons are small adhesive one-click ordering buttons that typically come with specific branding on them to indicate which product it links to on Amazon's site. But they're not so easy to reprogram as Starbucks cards; even the hacker-friendly Amazon IoT button required Pickren to bypass multiple security measures to get his coffee brewing.

Square goes offline: The prominent mobile point of sale provider Square suffered an issue with its merchant authentication service on Thursday, prompting the company to urge its merchants to use "offline mode" to handle payments if they are logged into Square, or to use other methods of payment if they were not logged in at the time of the incident, according to a message on Square's status site. Even after service was restored, the company continued to have issues with two-factor authentication.

Walmart's new style: Jet.com, a unit of Walmart, is upping its e-commerce game by buying the women's online fashion retailer Modcloth, according to a report from Jezebel. The deal was announced to Modcloth employees on Wednesday ahead of a scheduled Thursday closing date and Friday public announcement, according to Jezebel, which describes the Walmart-Modcloth pairing as "ironic" given the two companies' contrasting brand identities.

From the Web (powered by Wiser)

Paytm goes global, enters Canada with an App for bill payments
Business Standard • Karan Choudhury
Becoming one of the select few Indian startups to make a global entry, online mobile wallet major Paytm on Thursday said that announced today that it has launched bill payments service in Canada. According to the company, users in Canada will now...

Emerging Markets Blaze New Trails In Technology
Valuewalk.com • Alliance Bernstein
Emerging markets (EMs) often lag behind developed countries when it comes to technology adoption. But things are changing. Developing-world countries and companies are rapidly becoming Internet trendsetters—especially in online retail and digital payments. Conventional wisdom suggests that EMs are technology […] The...

The Fed's latest rate hike will hit your wallet soon
Business Insider • Bob Bryan
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday lifted its fed funds rate for the second time in just three months, and markets responded nearly immediately. Less immediate is the impact the move could have on your wallet. Most simply, the fed funds rate determines...

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