Tag Archives: technology

Amazon, PayPal, Square Fight For Small-Business Payments

Amazon.com ( AMZN ), PayPal ( PYPL ) and Square ( SQ ) are locked in a battle to win business from small and midsize businesses, according to recent announcements and a Bloomberg report. PayPal subsidiary Braintree is adding a service, Braintree Auth, that will allow merchants using all-in-one Web store builders such as BigCommerce to integrate Braintree more easily, the company wrote in a blog post Thursday . “Braintree shares our vision of enabling great e-commerce experiences for retailers all over the world,” said Troy Cox, senior product director at BigCommerce, which offers an all-in-one e-commerce Web platform. “With the launch of Braintree Auth, merchants have greater flexibility and more options to efficiently and securely run their businesses.” PayPal stock was up nearly 2%, above 39, in afternoon trading on the stock market today . The company is an IBD Leaderboard stock and has an IBD Composite Rating of 92, where 99 is the highest. The stock is below a 40.03 entry, trading just above an earlier entry at 38.62. Square stock was down 5.5% Friday afternoon, near 14.50. The company has a 59 CR, which measures key metrics such as earnings and sales growth. Though Braintree has been collaborating with partners such as BigCommerce for about a year , the announcement comes a day after Square said it was , for the first time, enabling anyone with a website to use Square to process a payment. Both Auth and Square aim their new website technologies at small and midsize companies. Such companies are Square’s core market; the company has about 2 million merchants. PayPal has more than 13 million merchants. According to Bloomberg , e-commerce leader Amazon has been succeeding in attracting small and midsize businesses to Amazon Payments, the platform it re-launched in 2013. “There’s a market for selling your soul to the devil,” Wedbush analyst Gil Luria told Bloomberg. “When you accept Amazon Payments, you get access to the coveted Amazon customers. The trade-off is you are opening your kimono to your biggest competitor.” Bloomberg says large retailers are unlikely to sign on because they do not want to give Amazon any such access to their customers and data.

Nvidia Conference: Virtual Reality, Smart Cars, Bartender Robots

Robot bartenders, a drone racetrack and liquid nitrogen-concocted food? Silicon Valley geeks know how to get down — and that’s just after-hours. Next week, graphics-chipmaker Nvidia ( NVDA ) is slated to host its annual GPU Technology Conference at the San Jose McEnery Conference Center where virtual reality, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars will take center stage. In conjunction, Nvidia will hold its analyst day Tuesday, when CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is scheduled to deliver a keynote talk. RBC Capital analyst Mitch Steves expects Nvidia to offer an update on its Pascal GPU architecture, virtual-reality offerings and automotive efforts. Steves upped his price target to 36 from 32 on Nvidia stock, which he rates a sector perform. “Overall, we are positive on the VR opportunity and believe that growth rates will remain robust,” he wrote in a research report. Virtual reality is getting a big splash this year, and tech names  Apple ( AAPL ), IBM ( IBM ), Alphabet ( GOOGL ) and Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) are on deck to attend the GTC alongside myriad startups like BriSky, a maker of industrial drones, and Lucid, which makes 3D cameras. Under the GTC umbrella, BriSky, Lucid and 10 others will compete Wednesday for $100,000 during the Emerging Companies Summit. Another eight are slated to present their VR tech in an eight-minute elevator pitch for a chance at $15,000. There’s no denying the summit’s success, which helped launch VR headset-maker Oculus and video game-streaming service Gaikai into worldwide recognition. Facebook ( FB ) later acquired Oculus for $2 billion, and Sony ( SNE ) paid $380 million for Gaikai. Mellanox Technology ( MLNX ) and Xilinx ( XLNX ) will present during the OpenPower Summit, Tuesday through Friday. Moore’s Law physics make power a challenge within the industry. Data centers need faster chips, but those chips overheat quicker. Other splashy GTC events include keynotes from IBM Watson Chief Technology Officer Rob High and Toyota Research Institute (under Toyota Motors ( TM )) CEO Gill Pratt on Wednesday and Thursday. Separately, GTC will feature speakers from Nvidia, Twitter ( TWTR ), IBM, Baidu ( BIDU ), Google and Disney ’s ( DIS ) Pixar.

Workday Financial Software Heading For ‘Success’; Stock Gains Again

Building momentum from a week of positive trade, cloud software developer Workday ’s ( WDAY ) stock gained another 1% Friday morning — nearly 8% for the week — after FBR Capital Markets satisfied itself that Workday’s financial software may “achieve the same level of success as (or greater than) its HCM (human capital management) product suite.” In a research note issued Friday, FBR analyst Samad Samana said that he visited Workday’s Pleasanton, Calif., headquarters in Silicon Valley this week and cornered Betsy Bland, vice president of financial management products, and Robynne Sisco, chief accounting officer, who let him “dig deeper into what we have found to be the single most important issue on investors’ minds.” The issue: Will Workday’s financial software do great? “We walked away more confident that the financials business is positioned to have a strong (fiscal 2017) as the product suite has improved significantly, more WDAY reps are now selling financials, a critical mass of live customers is providing positive references for potential customers, and the willingness to adopt cloud-based financials has increased,” Samana said. Investors responded by pushing Workday stock up 2% to 78.34 before easing back to a 1.6% gain above 78 by midday in the  stock market today . On Wednesday, Workday stock broke out of a 12-week, first-stage cup-with-handle base with a 75.60 buy point. Workday competes against no shortage of rivals, including SAP ( SAP ), Salesforce.com ( CRM ) and legacy software developer Oracle ( ORCL ). Salesforce stock was up 1.6% to 74.98 at midday Friday, and Oracle was up fractionally at 40.96. But SAP stock was down 0.8% to 79.74. Samana said he learned that Workday had added more than 45 financial software customers in the fiscal fourth quarter ended Jan. 31, “the most ever in a single quarter.” At 207 financial customers, it’s more than double the base of a year before. For Q4, Workday earnings beat Wall Street views, but its Q1 revenue outlook missed estimates. For fiscal Q1, ending in April, analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Workday to lose an adjusted two cents per share minus items, flat with a year earlier, on revenue up 35% to $339 million. Workday went public in October 2012, priced at 28.