A is for Apple and APIs in the ABCs of BNPL

 Digital technology and integrations between banks, fintech, and retailers are not just changing the how but when of payments. As a result, the way consumers pay for their purchases includes an increasingly popular option called buy now, pay later (BNPL).

Taking out a loan for a purchase as small as $35, which is basically what BNPL is, would never have been considered in the past. It would have been far too cumbersome for both consumers and lenders. But thanks to the prevalence of application programming interfaces (APIs) in the financial industry, the process is now as easy and seamless as a credit or debit card transaction.

Nearly every major retail store and site now offers customers the option to pay with a BNPL. The players in that space already include the Swedish fintech Klarna, as well as the US-based Sezzle and Affirm. The name behind many store credit cards, Synchrony, also has its offering, and now even bank-branded credit cards like Citi and Chase, as well as Amex, give their customers the option to use BNPL.

The space is heating up even more with Apple’s announcement that it would offer its own BNPL called Apple Pay Later through a subsidiary of the company that has obtained lending licenses.

Use of BNPL has exploded, accounting for $100 billion in retail purchases in 2021, up from $24 billion in 2020, as reported in Fintech Times. The forecast for the market indicates that the trend is here to stay. The global market for BNPL is expected to hit $3.98 trillion by 2030 with a CAGR of over 45%, starting from 2021, according to Allied Market Research.

Read more in The Way We Buy Now: The ABCs of BNPL The title is a nod to Anthony Trollope and my immersion in Victorian lit back in the day.

What do they want? Women in tech tell us

Takeaway: Women have long been a minority in tech, but what do those in the field most want from their employers and careers in general? We discussed this with women currently in tech, and here’s what they had to say.

To find out what women in tech want, we asked them. A query to HARO drew a large number of responses. Everyone wants equal opportunity, though some experience it more others. Some women share positive reports for the level of female representation at their places of work, while others still feel the sting of being overlooked by those who direct technical questions only to the men in the room. However, their thoughtful responses include not just what women want but what practical steps will get us there.

’ll Have What He’s Having

There’s no mystery, really. “Women in tech want exactly what men in tech want,“ asserts Amy Romero, global CMO at CreativeDrive. That means, “More opportunities for advancement, the ability to work on challenging projects that fuel their creative drive, unlock hidden potential and sources of growth, and role models in leadership positions.“

That sentiment is echoed by a number of women, including Ashley Fry: “Women in tech ultimately want a culture and environment to be cultivated that equals the playing field compared to their male counterparts.”

Read more in What Do Women in Tech Want?

Tip for Women in Tech

Takeaway: Women are vastly outnumbered by men in technological fields, which is why networking, mentoring and advice from other women in the field can be invaluable tools.

The gender gap that persists in tech career paths remains an obstacle to overcome for women who want to break into the field. But it can be done, and women who have made it have some valuable insight to share with those aspire to follow in their path or blaze their own. It all comes down to overcoming self-doubt and moving fearlessly forward. A number recommend connecting with others for support, but sometimes the motivation has to come from within.

Fortune Favors the Bold

Sophie Knowles, Founder & CEO of PDF Pro goes this far: “Do not be afraid to start your own business. A lot of people are scared by the prospect of going out on their own, but there is so much opportunity.” Her recommendation is to follow your passion because “you will have a much greater sense of purpose and see that you are capable of so much more than you ever thought you were.” That doesn’t mean just following your heart, though. She adds on the necessity of persistence, as well as doing the requisite research and asking for help when needed.

Likewise, Nancy Wang, Founder and CEO of Advancing Women in Product (AWIP) tells women, “If you see an opportunity you think is a fit, take the risk. Changing careers or taking on a new job can be scary, but never be afraid to take that job that you’re really excited about.” 

Read more in Top Career Tips for Women Working in Technology

Women in Tech: the glass is about a quarter full

Takeaway: Although women currently hold only about 25% of tech positions in the U.S., numbers are growing and many women are working to reduce this gender gap.

Assessing the state of women in tech does present a kind of half-full – or, more precisely, quarter-full – glass perspective. There is definitely still a marked gap in terms of representation in the field and even pay. However, there are also signs of movement in the right direction. So while we do mind the gap, we should also look at what works to narrow it down. 

Read more in Minding the Gender Gap: 10 Facts about Women in Tech

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A dozen women high up in tech

Ada Lovelace, credited with writing the first computer algorithm.

Takeaway: While men still dominate the top positions in tech, there are women who have worked hard to attain top positions, driving innovative technology and directing successful businesses. Often, they not only step into an existing business, but create or co-found a new commercial concept.

Look at any list of the top names in tech, and you will invariably notice that women are very much outnumbered, often representing only a third at best. To find the women who have risen through the ranks, you may have to look at the lists that are devoted to women specifically. There are a number of them, and this list cannot take them all into account. Instead, it presents a dozen. Some of the names are very well known, and some are less so.

Whether they have worked their way up the ranks of a well-established business, have developed a completely innovative concept that forms the basis of a new one, or have the vision to realize which new tech company they should be investing in, they all are highly accomplished in their field. So as not to appear to rank them in order of importance, they are simply presented in alphabetical order. 

Read more in 

12 Top Women in Tech Right Now

Casting the hero of your story

Recently I spoke with Ken Rutsky, author of Launching to Leading: How B2B Market Leaders Create Flashmobs, Marshal Parades, and Ignite Movements, about what what goes into successful B2B marketing. One of the biggest misconceptions people have, he said, is that all they need is the right tech. 

While tech does indeed play a role in data-driven marketing, Rutsky considers it only one third of the story. And getting the story right is actually the key thing in effectively connecting with B2B customers, just as it is for B2C customers. 

Who’s the hero in your marketing story? 

from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/40/
The_golden_fleece_and_the_heroes_who_lived_before_Achilles_%281921%29_%2814763705761%29.jpg

From the tales of Homer to comic books and films like Star Wars,  and even Disney’s Moana, stories of a hero’s journey remain persistently popular. Rutsky credits Joseph Campbell’s 1949 book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, for breaking down the steps involved in such stories. 

Rutsky quotes Campbell's summary of the journey story on p. 95 of his own book: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.” 

In his own words, Rutsky described it as the hero’s perilous journey far from home to bring “a magical gift” to improve his own world. Such stories are a great way for marketers to present a product or service that will solve a persistent problem for the business customer. And they often do so, but what they tend to get wrong is the casting of the hero. 

Read more in B2B Marketing: Who’s Your Hero?

Voice for Marketing

Voice is set to become a necessity for driving site traffic and a ticket to increased conversion

Businesses that want to drive traffic to their site have had to learn how to optimize for search and then how to optimize for mobile. Now they are going to have another medium to consider: optimizing for voice search.

“Voice tech is on the rise and will continue to grow,” said Dan Drapeau, Head of Technology at Blue Fountain Media, in a phone interview. He compared its transition to mainstream connection to that of social media and mobile.

Read more in 

Why Marketers Should Be Thinking About Voice

Tips for Aspiring Data Scientists

Kaggle graph

Data scientist ranks as the best job for 2019 in America on Glassdoor. With a median base salary of $108,000 and a job satisfaction rank of 4.3 out of 5, plus a fair number of openings predicted, that is not surprising. The question is: What does one have to do to get on track to qualify for this job?

To find out, we looked for the advice given to those who seek to get on this career track. Much comes down to the hard skills in coding and math. But that strong computation alone doesn’t cut it. Successful data scientists also need to be able to speak to business people on their own terms, which calls for the capabilities associated with soft skills and leadership.

Read more in 12 Key Tips for Learning Data Science

Getting Women to Stay On in Tech

As more and more business and manufacturing processes revolve around technology, the demand for people with the necessary skills is growing. To assure the supply of qualified people filling those positions, we have to stop thinking in terms in terms of stereotypes and clear the way for women to get on board.

Image courtesy: Pixabay

The problem is not that women aren’t trained in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. “Women have earned 57% of all bachelor's degrees and about half of all science and engineering (S&E) bachelor's degrees since the late 1990s,” according to the latest figures from the National Science Foundation. The problem is that those percentages don’t translate into the same level of representation at work.

In fact, women are still far outnumbered at engineering positions at tech companies. You can see the numbers of engineers in actual companies updated regularly on a spreadsheet in Tracy Chou's Women in Tech list.  Though the numbers vary, the average representation for women engineers at the companies listed appears to be near 20% to 25%.

The gap between the sexes grows higher up the hierarchy. The Gender Divide in Tech-Intensive Industries put out in 2014 demonstrated that women with MBAs with tech qualifications were still far less likely to work in the industry than their male counterparts. Perhaps part of the reason is that women ae far more likely to be placed in entry level jobs, at the rate of 55% in contrast to the 39% for men.  Women MBAs also were more likely to leave the tech industry than their male counterparts at the rate of 53% to 31%.

Read more in 

Retaining Women in Tech Takes More Than Training

Pulling together 11 colleges and 12 hospitals

Expansion is a sign of success, but it also brings new organizational challenges, particularly when that expansion is built on knitting together various organizations. That's the situation that Philadelphia-based Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health (TJU) were in as they sought to bring together what now amounts to 30,000 employees in 11 colleges, two universities and 12 hospitals.

Achieving a coherent vision for the newly expanded entity was built into the job description for Jeffrey Stevens. He said that he was hired as chief human resources officer to accomplish two key tasks. One was to establish HR locally. The second was to deploy an HR tech strategy that would "consolidate everyone onto a single core system."

Read more in 

University Adopts a Unifying Vision and Platform

Tech Forecast for 2016

 Sarah Lahav, CEO of SysAid Technologies gives her take on what we can expect to see this year. .in 

2016: 6 New IP Predictions

For one of the predictions, I was really tempted to put in a reference to The IT Crowd. You should be able to guess which one.

Dictionary updates

The Oxford English Dictionary wants to show itself to be keeping up with trends and trendy words, some of which  you may wish you never heard of. Its blog has post Buzzworthy words added to Oxford Dictionaries Online – squee! has been paraphrased by a number of other online news sources already. But odds are good that this is the only one not to include a picture of Miley Cyrus demonstrating a move in the not Disney approved dance known as twerk (one of the additions).

Those who are interested in the digital currency movement may be happy to see that bitcoin makes it in (in the lower case form).  And in a nod to something that's been practically beaten to death in tech circles, BYOD is there. It's intersting to see how many of these are underlined by Blogger's spell check, about half I'd say, including the title's own "squee" and "selfie," another word we may wish we didn't have to have.
Here's the full list of Oxford's updates.

apols

A/W

babymoon

balayage

bitcoin

blondie

buzzworthy

BYOD

cake pop

chandelier earring

click and collect

dappy

derp

digital detox

double denim

emoji

fauxhawk

FIL

flatform

FOMO

food baby

geek chic

girl crush

grats

guac

hackerspace

Internet of things

jorts

LDR

me time

MOOC

omnishambles

pear cider

phablet

pixie cut

selfie

space tourism

squee

srsly

street food

TL;DR

twerk

unlike 

Inhalers that do more than dispense medication

Louisville, one of IBM's 100 selected selected cities is putting big data to work to track asthma triggers with Asthmapolis. Read about it in

Big Data's Next Target: Asthma