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The news: Paze notched a major partnership with Worldpay to expand its merchant network, per a press release. Our take: Groundwork has been set for Paze to take off. We predicted that Paze would make significant gains in 2025, and this partnership will help Paze establish its online presence and customer familiarity for strong back-to-school and holiday shopping spend.

The news: Klarna will offer unlimited 5G data, talk, and text for $40/month with coverage on AT&T鈥檚 network in the US, per a press release, with plans to expand this deal to the UK and Germany soon. Our take: Klarna鈥檚 ambitions to be a BNPL provider, a mobile phone service, a neobank, and most recently鈥攁ccording to CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski鈥斺�渁 digital financial assistant,鈥� per CNBC, signals the company鈥檚 voracious appetite to be everything at once.

The trend: Consumers who take weight loss drugs are eating less and consuming healthier foods when they鈥檙e on the medication. Our take: This behavior change is driving a slew of food sellers and CPG brands to develop product lines and reformulate items with GLP-1 users in mind.

The ease and novelty of BNPL loans can rapidly snowball into a crisis for already financially fragile consumers.

The news: Quality control is a growing fear for advertisers as an Adweek investigation found ads from major brands appeared near offensive and inappropriate content. Ads from brands like Amazon and Verizon were found near sexual or racially offensive content on the Android short-form video app XShorts. Our take: Advertisers are increasingly faced with a digital landscape where programmatic ad buying lacks the quality control required to keep up with rapid innovation and demand for ad space鈥攑rompting renewed calls for transparency, verification, and human oversight in automated systems.

The ZeroOne initiative, led by Xbox co-creator J Allard and Surface veteran Panos Panay, signals a consumer hardware reboot for Amazon services, rooted in Microsoft experience.

The trend: Value-seeking behavior is on the rise, though not without some volatility, per Deloitte. Our take: Consumers鈥� growing focus on value doesn鈥檛 necessarily mean they want the cheapest option. In fact, up to 40% of how consumers evaluate value comes from nonprice factors, per a separate Deloitte study. That鈥檚 a critical distinction for brands. While it can be tempting to lean into discounts, a narrow focus on price cuts can hurt long-term brand equity. Brands that offer added value鈥攖hrough better quality, service, loyalty programs, or other innovations鈥攁re seeing stronger purchase intent and increasing consumer share.

The scene: When Cooper Flagg鈥攖he odds-on favorite to be the NBA Rookie of the Year next season鈥攕teps onto the court for the first time, he鈥檒l be wearing New Balance basketball shoes. Our take: New Balance鈥檚 push to sign Flagg, along with its other star-powered ambassadors, underscores its clear ambition to break into the top tier of global sportswear brands. While Nike and Adidas still lead by a wide margin, New Balance has its sights set on Puma, which reported $9.5 billion in sales last year鈥攚ell ahead of New Balance鈥檚 $7.8 billion. To close the gap, New Balance needs to turn its growing visibility into demand, which is far from a sure thing. From there, it must maintain that momentum with consistent sales across both its performance and lifestyle lines. If Flagg lives up to the hype and the brand finds ways to ride that momentum, New Balance could take a meaningful step up the sneaker hier

The news: China鈥檚 coffee giants are making their way to the US in the hopes of unlocking a lucrative market to offset pressures back home. Our take: Luckin鈥檚 and Cotti鈥檚 US launches are a problem for Starbucks, which is already struggling to compete with the companies in China and having a hard time winning over customers at home. Unfortunately for Starbucks, many of the moves it鈥檚 making鈥攕treamlining its menu, enhancing the in-store experience, leaning into premiumization鈥攔un counter to consumers鈥� current desire for variety, convenience, and value. That has created an opening for chains like Dutch Bros (and now Luckin and Cotti), which are better positioned to capitalize on emerging trends in the coffee space and can undercut Starbucks on price.

The insight: The US is mired in the 鈥渨orst housing market in almost 50 years,鈥� RH CEO Gary Friedman said during the company鈥檚 Q1 earnings call, as high housing costs and economic uncertainty chill demand. Our take: With the sluggish housing market showing few signs of improvement, retailers must lean into any pockets of opportunity they find. For RH, that鈥檚 burnishing its luxury credentials and pushing deeper into hospitality, while Wayfair is leaning on its diverse supplier base. The resilient pro market is another area companies should look to take advantage of as they try to ride out the downturn.

This decision feeds into the rising enthusiasm for stablecoin as the future of payments.

The news: DoorDash鈥檚 acquisition spree continued with its $175 million purchase of ad tech firm Symbiosis. The deal will expand the company鈥檚 offsite capabilities, enabling advertisers to run campaigns across search, social and display channels that are integrated with DoorDash鈥檚 closed-loop measurement system. Our take: DoorDash鈥檚 Symbiosis acquisition and ad updates should help the company attract bigger brands and retailers to its ad platform鈥攅specially as demand for its core delivery services remains healthy.

The news: SoFi will relaunch its crypto investing platform and will introduce self-serve international money transfers powered by blockchain technology by year鈥檚 end, per a press release. Our take: As customers warm to crypto transactions, remittance providers stand to score valuable volume鈥攁nd customer loyalty鈥攊f they style their businesses around what remittance senders want most: cheap, convent, and fast transactions.

Lloyds, NatWest, and Truist are redefining banking with generative AI. Lloyds moves beyond individual use cases to rethink processes entirely, aiming for a customer-facing AI agent by late summer 2025. NatWest shifted to reimagining entire customer experiences, empowering all 70,000 employees with AI tools to rapidly explore new possibilities. Truist focuses on "knowledge extraction," a low-risk, high-reward use case demonstrating immediate value. Continuous experimentation and adaptable strategies are crucial for AI implementation, requiring agile learning, boundary-pushing, and prioritizing employee buy-in for customer-focused solutions.