Mobile wallets that allow you to pay using your phone have been around for well more than a decade, and over those years they’ve grown in popularity, becoming a key part of consumers’ credit card usage. According to a "state of credit card report" for 2025 from credit bureau Experian, 53% of Americans in a survey say they use digital wallets more frequently than traditional payment methods. To further incentivize mobile wallet usage, some credit card issuers offer bonus rewards when you elect to pay that way. But those incentives can go beyond just higher reward rates. In fact, mobile wallets in some ways are becoming an essential part of activating and holding a credit card. For example, they can offer immediate access to your credit line, and they can be easier and safer than paying with a physical card. From a rewards perspective, it can make a lot of sense to reach for your phone now instead of your physical card. The Apple Card offers its highest reward rates when you use it through the Apple Pay mobile wallet. Same goes for the PayPal Cashback Mastercard® when you use it to make purchases via the PayPal digital wallet. The Kroger grocery store giant has a co-branded credit card that earns the most when you pay using an eligible digital wallet, and some major credit cards with quarterly rotating bonus categories have a history of incentivizing digital wallet use. But again, these days it's not just about the rewards. Mobile wallets like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and PayPal can offer immediate access to your credit line while you wait for your physical card to arrive after approval. Indeed, most major issuers including Bank of America®, Capital One and Chase now offer instant virtual credit card numbers for eligible cards that can be used upon approval by adding them to a digital wallet. Additionally, many co-branded credit cards — those offered in partnership with another brand — commonly offer instant card access and can be used immediately on in-brand purchases. Credit cards typically take seven to 10 days to arrive after approval, so instant access to your credit line can be particularly useful if you need to make an urgent or unexpected purchase. Plus, they allow you to start spending toward a card’s sign-up bonus right away. As issuers push toward mobile payments, a growing number of merchants and businesses are similarly adopting the payment method. The percentage of U.S. businesses that used digital wallets increased to 62% in 2023, compared to 47% the previous year, according to a 2023 survey commissioned by the Federal Reserve Financial Services. Wider acceptance is potentially good news for the average American, who according to Experian has about four credit cards. While that won’t necessarily weigh down your wallet, it can be hard to manage multiple cards and rewards categories at once. Mobile wallets offer a more efficient way to store and organize all of your workhorse cards, while not having to carry around ones that you don't use often. They can also help you more easily monitor your spending and rewards, and some even track your orders' status and arrival time. Plus, paying with a digital wallet offers added security. That’s because it uses technology called tokenization when you pay, which masks your real credit card number and instead sends an encrypted "token" that’s unique to each payment. This is unlike swiping or dipping a physical card, during which your credit card number is more directly accessible. And again, because a mobile wallet doesn't require you to have your physical cards present, there's less chance of one falling out of your pocket or purse. More From NerdWallet Funto Omojola writes for NerdWallet. Email: fomojola@nerdwallet.com . The article Activating Your Credit Card? Don’t Skip the Mobile Wallet Step originally appeared on NerdWallet. Get any of our free email newsletters — news headlines, sports, arts & entertainment, state legislature, CFD news, and more.
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Stock market today: Wall Street inches higher to set more recordsTurning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B food tech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA ) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production capacity by around 7.5x. The round fast follows a $15.4 million Series A back in February . Currently, the startup is producing 2,000 tons of ChoViva, as it calls its cocoa-free, lower carbon chocolate alternative, per year. It plans to step that up to over 15,000 tons as it adds capacity and kicks off international expansion outside an initial trio of European markets. Opening its first U.S.-based production facility is on the cards. Building on the three local markets (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) where its chocolate substitute is already in food products that aim to tempt sweet-toothed consumers, it is also eyeing launches into the U.K. and France during the first quarter of 2025. Brands buying into ChoViva so far include Lambertz, Lindt, Rewe Group, and even the German train operator, Deutsche Bahn, which doubtless pops a lot of chocolate treats on customers’ tea trays every day. So far, the startup has around 20 customers for its alt chocolate ingredients, mostly major European food manufacturers but also some U.S. brands. As it grows capacity, it’ll be aiming to add more strategic partners too. Cocoa, not so sweet The problem Planet A Foods is tackling is making a staple sweet treat (chocolate) less of an environmental horror. Traditional cocoa-based chocolate production raises serious sustainability issues, since the crop grows in areas with rainforest, which can be cut down to make way for cocoa bean plantations. Global demand is also outstripping an increasingly fragile (and ethically fraught) supply, leading to inflated costs and fears for the future of the cocoa bean in a rapidly warming world. Supplying the food industry with an alternative chocolate-esque ingredient that — just like the real deal — can be baked into or folded onto snack products like breakfast cereals, confectionary, and cakes is Planet A’s mission. And it’s not a trivial goal: The startup reckons an annual toll of some 500 million tons of CO 2 could be avoided through switching bulk chocolate production away from cocoa beans to its more sustainable method that avoids deforestation and localizes ingredients sourcing. The ingredients it uses to produce ChoViva have been selected in part as they can be grown locally (oats are another of its staples) — hence it claims a carbon footprint that’s up to 80% lower than conventional chocolate (but note that higher bound is for the vegan version of ChoViva which, unlike other blends, doesn’t contain any milk products). “We’re not against chocolate,” stresses co-founder and CEO Dr. Maximilian Marquart, one half of the brother-sister founder team behind Planet A Foods. CTO Dr. Sara Marquart is the food scientist who developed the process for making the cocoa-free chocolate. “That’s very important. So we’re not taking away your [premium] chocolate. We’re after all the snacking applications — [confectionary such as] M&Ms, Snickers, Mars, Bounty, you know, all that stuff.” Premium chocolate is a tiny market compared to the bulk business of mass market confectionary that Planet A Foods is targeting. And in this domain, where environmental degradation occurs at terrible scale, the quality of the chocolate that’s used is generally lower, often because it’s lower in actual cocoa-content — hence [Maximilian] Marquart argues there’s no difference between how ChoViva tastes, and the stuff consumers are routinely being sold in mass market products. “It’s indistinguishable,” he suggests. “My sister Sara . . . found out that actually 80% of the typical chocolate flavors come from the processing of the cocoa beans and not from the beans itself — so . . . if eight out of 10 flavors are actually coming from fermentation roasting, why do you need cocoa beans?” Scaling for impact The economics also make ChoViva an attractive switch for the industrial food industry, as the startup tells it, since the product is not subject to the price volatility that can hit cocoa beans as a limited resource. But for such a switch to happen, the startup needs to be able to produce its alternative at the volumes that food giants demand — so there’s a long road of scaling ahead for the team. At this point, the production capacity for ChoViva still represents an incredibly tiny portion of the global cocoa bean harvest — which [Maximilian] Marquart notes is between 4 million and 5 million tons annually. So it will require giant leaps in production capacity to have the massive positive sustainability change the Marquarts want. “We’ve already acquired the machines [for this stage of industrialization]. So we are already in the scale-up runs, and we have some real industrial clients already, so we’re currently just trying to cope with the demand in Europe,” he says, adding: “We’re automating. We’re improving the processes. We are also commissioning new machines. Plus, we are currently planning another facility in the States.” They are also exploring how the business might respond to demand from Asia ([Maximilian] Marquart happens to be on a business trip to Japan when we talk). But he says they also recognize that, as a startup, they do need to focus, too. “We’re a startup . . . we’re not naive. So we can’t conquer the world alone,” he tells TechCrunch. “I think U.K. and U.S. are the main markets where we will expand. However, in Asia we have a lot of demand, so we’re currently investigating what we do here — what we can do alone, and together with partners eventually.” Supply chain all-nighters Being in the (quasi) chocolate-making business might conjure up quaint images of high-hatted chocolatiers gently whipping batches of sweet stuff in charmingly rustic environs. But don’t be fooled: the business of manufacturing ChoViva is already sweating toil. Having everything in place to be able to precisely produce tons of cocoa-free chocolate to ship out exactly when customers need it has required the founders to pull some all-nighters at the plant. And [Maximilian] Marquart says a big focus for this tranche of scaling is automation — so they can reduce the risk of human errors causing supply chain headaches. We slept under those machines . . . Every day our life is a hell given the challenges that we have in the supply chain.” “I think currently we’re at a scale — industrial scale — that no one else is,” he suggests when asked about the competitive landscape for cocoa-free chocolate. Other startups he name-checks are Foreverland, Nukoko, WinWin, and Voyage Foods. They are using various methods and base ingredients (including cereals, broad beans, carob, grape seeds, and more) to blend up rival cocoa-free chocolate products. So there’s a range of approaches in play. In this context, and, indeed, for almost any kind of startup, succeeding “takes more than just developing a product” — or, in this case, an ingredient in a lab — and [Maximilian] Marquart says this invention element represents only 5% of the challenge they’ve set themselves. “The main challenge lies in building up production, building up quality management, building up the supply chain. Every day, two 40-ton lorries leave our factory with our product. And that’s something that someone else needs to figure out. It’s really a challenge,” he emphasizes, adding: “Sara — my sister — and I, we slept under those machines. We really figured out the supply chain. It’s a big hassle. Every day our life is a hell given the challenges that we have in the supply chain.” “Most of the other competitors, they have great products, but they need to bring that into reality, and need to be really able to deliver it to their customers, and that lies ahead of them. It’s incredibly difficult to deliver 40 tons of chocolate to a customer in time, at the right place, at the right recipe, the right quality.” Planet A Foods’ Series B was co-led by Burda Principal Investments and Zintinus, with participation from AgriFoodTech Venture Alliance, Bayern Kapital, Cherry Ventures, Omnes Capital, Tengelmann Ventures, and World Fund. R&D Scaling aside, funding will also go on further research and development, as the team is working on an alternative to cocoa butter, which is another key ingredient for the food industry. Being able to offer a replacement for palm oil is another goal, as that also creates huge sustainability problems. The startup also believes its approach could work to replace other specialty fats that are used in food production, such as stearin, an animal fat, or coconut oil, per [Maximilian] Marquart. “[Sara] developed a kind of full fermentation platform where we can make bio identical coco butter,” he notes, saying bio identical in this context “means the right mouthful, the right snap, the right melting point, the right properties.” “With our fermentation technology, we can offer a bio identical cocoa butter using fermentation at a much lower price than conventional cocoa butter, and that’s really a game changer in the future,” he suggests. “I think we’re the only company that is actually able to produce cocoa butter using fermentation at a lower price than natural cocoa butter.” There’s an additional challenge here, though. For one version of the cocoa butter, which [Maximilian] Marquart suggests yields the best set of properties, they use precision fermentation. It’s a biotech method that involves genetically engineered microorganisms. This version of the product has to be approved as a novel food before it can be sold. And since European regulations are more stringent, he suggests it could hit the U.S. market first.White House says at least 8 US telecom firms, dozens of nations impacted by China hacking campaignUnitedHealth Group Inc.'s stock prices continued to climb on Wednesday despite the brutal murder of the CEO of its subsidiary, UnitedHealthcare (UNH), the nation's largest healthcare company. The stock price closed at $605.23 on Tuesday and opened Wednesday morning at $613, shortly after news of CEO Brian Thompson's assassination broke around 9 a.m. ET. The stock dipped to its lowest point of the session of $607.12 around 11 a.m. However, it continued slowly climbing throughout the day, reaching $610.79 at Wednesday's closing bell. The late CEO's wife told NBC News her husband had been receiving threats before his targeted attack in New York City ahead of an investor conference. "There had been some threats," Paulette Thompson told NBC News . "Basically, I don't know, a lack of coverage? I don't know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him." Police are still looking for the suspect, whom they described as a light-skinned male, last seen wearing a light brown or cream colored jacket, a black face mask, black and white sneakers and a gray backpack. A $10,000 reward is being offered to anyone with information leading to an arrest. Originally published by Latin Times
FACT CHECK: Did Rachel Maddow Cry On Show Due To Elon Musk X Post?Thrivent Financial for Lutherans boosted its position in Copart, Inc. ( NASDAQ:CPRT – Free Report ) by 34.0% in the 3rd quarter, according to the company in its most recent disclosure with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 193,671 shares of the business services provider’s stock after purchasing an additional 49,149 shares during the period. Thrivent Financial for Lutherans’ holdings in Copart were worth $10,149,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A number of other hedge funds have also recently modified their holdings of the business. CreativeOne Wealth LLC bought a new stake in Copart during the 1st quarter valued at about $344,000. EP Wealth Advisors LLC grew its holdings in Copart by 18.4% during the 1st quarter. EP Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 10,402 shares of the business services provider’s stock worth $602,000 after acquiring an additional 1,614 shares in the last quarter. Advisors Asset Management Inc. increased its position in Copart by 108.1% during the 1st quarter. Advisors Asset Management Inc. now owns 9,299 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $539,000 after purchasing an additional 4,831 shares during the period. Sheaff Brock Investment Advisors LLC raised its holdings in shares of Copart by 10.5% in the 1st quarter. Sheaff Brock Investment Advisors LLC now owns 5,322 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $308,000 after purchasing an additional 507 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Toronto Dominion Bank raised its holdings in shares of Copart by 2.1% in the 1st quarter. Toronto Dominion Bank now owns 515,872 shares of the business services provider’s stock valued at $29,879,000 after purchasing an additional 10,814 shares in the last quarter. Institutional investors own 85.78% of the company’s stock. Analyst Upgrades and Downgrades Several equities analysts recently issued reports on CPRT shares. Robert W. Baird cut their price objective on shares of Copart from $58.00 to $56.00 and set an “outperform” rating on the stock in a report on Thursday, September 5th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. upped their price objective on Copart from $55.00 to $60.00 and gave the stock a “neutral” rating in a research note on Tuesday. Copart Stock Up 2.8 % Shares of CPRT opened at $56.97 on Friday. The company has a 50 day moving average of $53.54 and a two-hundred day moving average of $53.16. Copart, Inc. has a twelve month low of $46.21 and a twelve month high of $58.58. The company has a market cap of $54.88 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 40.98 and a beta of 1.27. Copart ( NASDAQ:CPRT – Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, September 4th. The business services provider reported $0.33 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing the consensus estimate of $0.36 by ($0.03). The company had revenue of $1.07 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $1.07 billion. Copart had a net margin of 32.17% and a return on equity of 19.55%. The business’s revenue was up 7.2% compared to the same quarter last year. During the same quarter last year, the company earned $0.34 EPS. On average, sell-side analysts expect that Copart, Inc. will post 1.54 EPS for the current year. Copart Profile ( Free Report ) Copart, Inc provides online auctions and vehicle remarketing services. It offers a range of services for processing and selling vehicles over the Internet through its Virtual Bidding Third Generation Internet auction-style sales technology on behalf of vehicle sellers, insurance companies, banks and finance companies, charities, and fleet operators and dealers, as well as individual owners. Featured Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding CPRT? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Copart, Inc. ( NASDAQ:CPRT – Free Report ). Receive News & Ratings for Copart Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Copart and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .