Sprint And T-Mobile Merger, Spend Management And State Tax Top This Week’s News

It’s the end of a short holiday workweek, and the PYMNTS Weekender is here to make sure you didn’t miss anything with the latest in payments and commerce news. We have a deep dive into spend management in addition to news involving the Sprint and T-Mobile merger, as well as data on state tax laws.

Top News

U.S. Gov’t Fights States’ Bid To Block Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Saying Move Would Slow 5G

A group of state attorneys is joining together to fight a merger of Sprint and T-Mobile that the United States Justice Department supports. T-Mobile and Sprint are the third and fourth-largest wireless carriers in the country. The $26 billion deal is being heard in federal court in New York and could wrap up on Friday.

Visa’s Bill Sheley On What’s Next For Push Payments

In a recent conversation with Karen Webster, Bill Sheley, global head of push payments for Visa, took a look at the expansion of Visa’s journey throughout the payments supply chain, and mused over the most disruptive payment trends of the 2010s  that are now offering opportunities for Visa Direct to tap into new, unforeseen use cases for the next decade.

Payments Flash-Forward: Why December 2020 Will Be One To Remember

PYMNTS asked 30 payment executives to make a prediction about payments and commerce that they’d put in a time capsule to be unearthed at the conclusion of next year. Among the common themes to emerge: Change will come to the point of sale (POS), moved by the continued pivot to contactless ways to pay — and the demographic change that will bring the mighty millennial more buying power.

Colombia Blocks Uber From Using Its Ride-Hailing App

Uber was ordered to stop securing business in Colombia via its popular ride-hailing app. The country’s Superintendency of Industry and Commerce (SIC) reportedly said Uber went against market rules. The decision comes after a lawsuit filed against the company by COTECH SA.

12 Ways Consumers Will Pay (And Be Paid) In 2020

Past is prologue, and what has happened this year will have large implications for the arriving decade. These are are the 2019 payment trends that made the most significant impact and promise to make even more substantial impacts in the new decade.

Trackers and Reports

Behind Sysco’s Spend Management Switch To Cards

A reliance on manual expense tools is an easy way to frustrate employees as well as their employers. Food management and distribution company Sysco stopped using such paper-based systems almost four years ago, preferring to utilize a suite of credit card products that can more easily categorize and track employees’ spending.

Brent Anderson, senior director of finance policy and internal controls for Sysco, recently spoke with PYMNTS about why assured and speedy access to digital expense tools is crucial to robust spend management.

A ‘Diaper’ By Any Other Tax Code: The Complexities Of Selling Across State Tax Laws

Retailers aiming to sell throughout the nation have to pay attention to how their goods are treated by each state’s tax code. Products considered as exempt medical necessities in some states may be taxed at high rates in others, and businesses cannot afford to be caught by surprise.

BNY Mellon On The Two Key Factors To AP Automation

Businesses are just as particular as end consumers. Neither commercial nor retail customers can tolerate slow payments, and they become increasingly frustrated when they are asked to deal with these methods.

Most in the accounts payable (AP) world would like to move their operations to digital systems that tap into automated technology for faster payments, but that, unfortunately, requires every partner institution and vendor to match their own company’s innovation speed, says Carl Slabicki, head of strategic payment solutions at BNY Mellon.

In a feature story, Slabicki explains how BNY Mellon is utilizing AP automation solutions to further innovate its B2B payment offerings in the face of these changing expectations.

Fun, Cool and Otherwise Interesting

The Best Of The Monday Conversation: Everything We Learned In 2019

Sometimes a live conversation is a good thing. It’s why PYMNTS has a Monday Conversation every week — a conversation intended to get another human being on the other end of the phone for their input into what’s moving and shaking in the world of payments and commerce means to those who are at its helm. This is what PYMNTS learned this year.

Tune In: Best PYMNTS (or Payments) Podcasts Of 2019

PYMNTS doesn’t just cover the news. We regularly feature podcast conversations with the top experts, entrepreneurs and executives involved in transactions and commerce and all the related areas in between. And this year was no exception. These are some of our best podcasts from the past 12 months.

Did Blockchain Peak In 2019?

The headlines in recent weeks may have trumpeted China’s push toward becoming a global leader in the blockchain space, with government backing stirring excitement, and where digital currency prices rose and then proved, to put it mildly, as volatile as ever.

In business, however, money is oxygen. When the flow of funds, from private equity and venture capital firms, or investment from companies willing to commit research and development dollars to an industry begins to dwindle, then several projects do not make it beyond concept to the land of reality.

Is Uber Founder Travis Kalanick Preparing A Ghost Kitchen Counterattack?

Could ghost kitchens become the next battleground involving Uber and Travis Kalanick, its founder and former CEO? As is now old news, a Dec. 24 announcement said that Kalanick would officially leave the board of Uber as of Dec. 31, 2019. Kalanick, as of late, has also been doing work with his new CloudKitchens startup, which has been purchasing real estate globally.