Main Street/page/4 news and trends

As Consumer Banking Retreats, Goldman Eyes Deeper Dive Into Corporate Markets
Earnings // October 15, 2024

As is always the case when Wall Street heavy hitters weigh in with earnings, the markets and financial trade publications parse the data and management commentary for insight on investment banking. For Goldman Sachs, the latest earnings report on Tuesday (Oct. 15) offered variations on...

Big Tech’s AI Tools Are Helping Democratize Growth for Small Businesses
SMBs // September 20, 2024

Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face a unique set of challenges. These challenges, as sprawling as they are complex, are commonly ill-suited to be met by one-size-fits-all tools and generic solutions. Rather, they require dynamic and agile innovations — innovations like artificial intelligence (AI). And...

The Top 3 Benefits Small Businesses Get From AI
SMBs // August 22, 2024

Growth is essential for all businesses, especially the small ones. Artificial intelligence (AI) is one tool that can help firms achieve that by giving them a competitive edge, streamlining thier operations and enhancing customer experiences. For instance, GoDaddy on Tuesday (Aug. 20) launched a new generative...

Goldman’s Card Balances Up 11% as Management Is ‘Pleased’ With Credit Performance
Earnings // July 15, 2024

Goldman Sachs’ GreenSky sale is in the rearview mirror and its pivot from Main Street banking is ongoing. Its latest earnings results, released Monday (July 15), show that “substantially all” of the Marcus loans were sold a year ago. As PYMNTS reported earlier this year, independent...

Interviews & Exclusives
Main Street Merchants See Light at End of 2024 Tunnel

June 19, 2024
We’re roughly at the midpoint of 2024, and the midpoint is a good time to take stock of where we’ve been and what lies ahead. For the Main Street small businesses that power job creations and wages — and are dependent on the state of the U.S. consumer — the prognosis for the next six […]

1 in 3 Shoppers Wants to Buy Local Products

June 18, 2024
As retailers look to win customers’ loyalty, PYMNTS Intelligence research finds that buying local goods is a top-of-mind concern for a significant share of consumers. By the Numbers For the...

Lightspeed CEO Points to B2B Sales as Next Engine of Small Merchant Growth

May 18, 2024
Profit is the applause a business gets from its customers. So the saying, originally from business author Ken Blanchard, goes. Blanchard’s quip highlights the fact that to successfully navigate marketplace...

Visa Stresses Education as Small Businesses Confront Fraud Vulnerabilities

May 02, 2024
Most crimes, as the saying goes, are crimes of opportunity. And that’s bad news for small businesses, whose lack of resources and challenges when accessing financing often leaves them ill-prepared...

Quick Reads
Business Lender iwoca Raises $243 Million to Fund Small Businesses

October 16, 2023
European small business lender iwoca says it has raised $243 million in new funding.  The financing, announced late Monday (Oct. 16), follows the $152 million the London-based company raised in January to meet a rising demand for working capital among small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs). “We started iwoca after the financial crisis to offer [SMBs] the support that […]

Spiking Fuel Prices Pitch Wallets of Consumers and Businesses

September 14, 2023
It’s a season of pain at the pump, no matter what type of fuel you’re pumping. As The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) noted in a report Thursday (Sept. 14), the cost of...

Some Sectors Recover From COVID Faster Than Others

April 22, 2022
While parts of the economy have experienced a recovery that restored them to pre-pandemic levels, not every sector is out of the woods quite yet. The fitness, retail and restaurant...

Main Street Businesses Optimistic About 2022 … for Now

March 18, 2022
When we surveyed businesses two years ago about their financial health, a considerable number of them said they didn’t expect to survive. That number peaked in November 2020 at 24%...