News

Checkout.com Uses AI To Boost eCommerce Acceptance Rates

Intelligent Acceptance leverages the company’s global data network to increase acceptance rates, lower fees, and improve merchant’s profits.

Published

3 years ago

July 4, 2023

Nour Nasir

Checkout.com

Global payments solution provider, Checkout.com, has launched a new feature called Intelligent Acceptance. The system uses an AI-powered optimization engine that can monitor billions of transactional data points, with early beta testing showing a 9.5% average improvement in checkout acceptance rates.

“We believe in abstracting complexity for businesses and empowering them to optimize their payments with ease. Machine learning enables us to […] leverage our expansive global transaction data to provide real-time insights. Meanwhile, an adaptive AI-powered payments engine constantly optimizes acceptance rates, unlocking more revenue, saving time, and offering greater cost controls,” says Meron Colbeci, Chief Product Officer at Checkout.com.

False declines — legitimate transactions mistaken for fraud attempts and subsequently blocked — are a $50.7 billion problem globally. Intelligent Acceptance can route card payments through the system much more smoothly, using continuous adaptation while leveraging Checkout.com’s global network and direct relationships with card acquirers to deliver incremental improvements.

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Intelligent Acceptance can also drive down a merchant’s costs by dynamically routing transactions to the network with the lowest fees. Furthermore, if a transaction requires 3DS authentication, data can be automatically added to a payment request to ensure compliance.

The launch of Intelligent Acceptance comes as business leaders seek new ways to drive revenue and improve cost efficiencies to reconcile increased expenses. Research conducted by Checkout.com in partnership with Oxford Economics recently revealed that up to 25% of consumers abandoned an online purchase due to too much checkout friction, resulting in significant lost revenue for merchants.

News

Instagram Redraws Its Wordmark And The Internet Reads “Instagzam”

Instagram’s first wordmark refresh in a decade arrives with new fonts, a restrained gradient — and a Reddit verdict of sidegrade.

Published

4 days ago

August 14, 2026

Nour Nasir

Instagram

Although Instagram’s famous camera icon hasn’t changed, the company has refreshed the handwritten wordmark at the top of its app. This is the first redesign we’ve seen in ten years, and one the internet promptly set about renaming.

“The wordmark at the top of the app hasn’t changed in 10 years, so it was time for a refresh,” Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote in a post on August 13, describing the new version as “cleaner and more modern” while keeping references to the original design.

Instagram says its team explored hundreds of options — all-caps lettering, camera-inspired concepts, even literal handwriting — before returning to script. “Script reflects individuality, so referencing that felt right,” Instagram director of product design Jasmine Probst said in Meta’s announcement. “The new wordmark is bolder and simpler, with touches of unexpectedness. It cues individual expression, a personal voice, both of which have always been core to Instagram”.

The wordmark is part of a broader brand overhaul: an updated Instagram Sans typeface, two new fonts — the hand-drawn Instagram Pen and Instagram Mono — plus refreshed motion and layouts, and more restrained use of the signature gradient. The wordmark is rolling out globally now, with the rest arriving throughout 2026 and beyond.

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The design mixes cursive and print lettering, some characters connected and others floating free. That hybrid approach, combined with unusually shaped “s” and “r” characters, led some users to conclude the logo actually reads “Instagzam”. On the r/logodesign subreddit, one user said the wordmark looked “fan-made,” like something built in Canva; another called it “an unsettling mix of manuscript and cursive”; a third summarized it as a “sidegrade” — or, inevitably, a “zidegrade”.

Not everyone was hostile to the new look. Some found the half-cursive design stylish and surprisingly readable, while others called it an improvement on its predecessor, and one commenter argued Instagram was simply adopting minimalist branding later than everyone else. Either way, the platform now has a refreshed identity, three updated fonts, and an unofficial new pronunciation.