💡 The Number is 28.5%

That's how many U.S. workers that say they're at least somewhat likely to lose their job, and it's the highest number yet in 13 months of tracking.

On this episode of The Number, analyst Matt Albrecht reveals key data points the latest PYMNTS Consumer as:

👀 21% of consumers who live paycheck to paycheck comfortably paid down debt faster or avoided new debt because of job or income worries.

One number. The story behind it. Tune in to find out What’s Next.

🤝 @okx and @Mastercard bring stablecoin card to most US states.

Full story on PYMNTS: hubs.ly/Q04D2K250

How many payment projects has your bank funded in the last few years? If each one was tied to a single rail, the stack underneath got harder to change with every upgrade.

Payment hubs promise one orchestration layer across multiple rails, faster new capabilities and nother massive rip-and-replace. Do they deliver?

Find out live with PYMNTS and @FinastraFS on November 3 at 12 PM ET. hubs.ly/Q04C_94B0

🏟️ Bilt is paying $300 million for Lava, adding loyalty partnerships with 56 pro sports franchises across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS to its neighborhood commerce network.

Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04D12S80

How fast does an invoice actually become cash you can use?

@Billtrust CFO David Zwick now asks that about every process change. In a new PYMNTS eBook, he writes that “speed in processing an invoice has nothing to do with speed in actually getting paid.” A Billtrust survey found miss their monthly cash forecast by 16% or more.

Find out which projects Zwick now calls urgent, and which ones got downgraded to nice-to-have. hubs.ly/Q04C_5m_0

💸 Binance has processed $4.72 billion in withdrawals since restoring them in phases Sunday, three days after hackers stole $6.3 billion in the largest crypto theft on record.

Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04D12zs0

⏱️ QUICK TAKES: AI is changing where people start shopping. Changing where they finish is proving much harder.

Amazon accounts for 29% of online retail research starts but 59% of AI-assisted purchases, according to PYMNTS Intelligence.

@WeAreVelera CPO Denise Stevens says AI trust will still win the transaction part.”

More on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04C_8K30

A midsize bank told RSA it had no AI agents. RSA found 4,000 operating inside it.

@RSAsecurity CEO Greg Nelson told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster that a bank with 4,000 agents might have 20,000 within a year. “I haven’t found one company yet that is comfortable that they know how he said.

Watch the full conversation to find out how banks can track down the agents already at work and spot the riskiest ones. hubs.ly/Q04C--zn0

We asked four payments executives where automation still needs a human sign-off. Their answers kept coming back to who owns the outcome.

Maverick Payments’ Bill Christensen, Tungsten Automation’s Emily Nash-Walker and @i2cinc’s Matt Pearce keep responsibility inside the ’s Tim Joslyn says a clear liability model for AI agents has yet to emerge.

Find out what they say must happen before the final human approval disappears. hubs.ly/Q04C-XRf0

A credit union card works a lot like a gym membership. Having one doesn’t mean members use it.

Among CU members who carry multiple cards, 60% do so to maximize rewards or perks, according to PYMNTS Intelligence and @WeAreVelera. Velera’s Cody Banks says the right rewards experiences can help credit unions increase card usage.

Find out how CUs can make their card the one members reach for at checkout. hubs.ly/Q04C-VS60

Global Payments gets $40B buyout bid.

Full story on PYMNTS: hubs.ly/Q04C-lxd0

Your payments got faster. Did your fraud detection?

Instant bank payments have become a core part of how businesses pay out claims, collect loan payments and fund customer accounts. That speed is great for customers, but it leaves fraud teams very little time to act. The check e money moves, not after.

Join PYMNTS’ John Gaffney with Brian Dammeir of @Plaid, Stephen Sikes of @Public and John Lynch of Avant on November 18 at 12 PM ET. They’ll cover how leading companies keep bank payments fast and simple while keeping return risk in check.

Save your spot. hubs.ly/Q04CTx4H0

🛒 Your customer picked the product, filled the cart and clicked checkout. Then they couldn’t pay the way they wanted, so they left. In just 30 days, 56 million U.S. shoppers did exactly that.

New PYMNTS Intelligence research with @PayPal shows which shoppers merchants are wallets matter even more as consumers start handing purchases to AI agents.

Read the report to see who’s walking away and what merchants can do about it. hubs.ly/Q04CTt_G0

If you run a one-person business, you’re also its CFO, whether you planned on it or not.

Hooman Radfar, co-founder and CEO of @CollectiveFin, told PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster that one customer said the service freed him to make his child’s Wednesday baseball game instead of doing ull interview to learn what Collective takes off owners’ plates and where its new $100 million is headed. hubs.ly/Q04CT4s20

If your budget got tighter tomorrow, what would you give up last?

🏡 Across every financial group in our latest survey, the most common answer was the house. Mortgage or homeownership costs topped the list of expenses consumers would protect, at 23% to 27%. Consumers struggling ore weight on keeping their car and their healthcare.

Find out which optional purchases consumers would still defend when money gets tight in October's Paycheck to Paycheck report. hubs.ly/Q04CT3bj0

💰 Kalshi closed a $1 billion Series G at a $40 billion valuation, with annualized trading volume past $1 trillion and more than 30 million accounts created.

Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CQCCf0

💳 Kipp was acquired by an investor group led by The Lifetime Value Company and is pushing into the US, where merchants pay a premium to recover transactions issuers would otherwise decline.

Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CLTJg0

The final human approval at a bank could eventually disappear, just not yet.

Matt Pearce, vice president of fraud risk management and dispute operations at @i2cinc, told PYMNTS he expects people to stay involved in high-stakes exceptions for at least the next three to five aud, compliance, credit risk and disputes.

Watch the full interview to find out what has to change before banks remove that final approval. hubs.ly/Q04CLRzg0

Payments leaders, map your systems before you replace a single component.
Taranjit Singh, senior vice president and Technical Fellow for Corporate Payments at @WEXIncNews, favors continuous modernization over replacement projects that can take years.

“You cannot modernize a t thoroughly mapped,” he told PYMNTS.

Watch the full interview to find out what to examine behind an API before trusting it to move money. hubs.ly/Q04CLMWW0

Merchant underwriters are headed for fewer files and tougher calls.

Bill Christensen, senior vice president of risk and underwriting at Maverick Payments, told PYMNTS the company already uses AI to auto-board low-risk accounts with predictable profiles. Its underwriters focus on rue exceptions.

Watch the full interview to find out what automated systems must prove before they earn more approval authority. hubs.ly/Q04CLLpQ0

⚖️ The Justice Department is asking whether Nvidia’s $12.93 billion purchase of Hugging Face would give it control of a foundational distribution point for AI.

Full story on PYMNTS. hubs.ly/Q04CH6Zj0