Tech News: Birdeye releases payments app

Birdeye, a reputation and customer experience platform for small businesses, is expanding into the payments space with the release of its Birdeye Payments solution. Users can collect one-time and recurring payments through credit cards, debit cards, ACH and mobile wallets including Apple Pay and Google Pay; integrate with popular accounting systems like QuickBooks and FreshBooks, as well as industry-specific applications to reconcile accounts and trigger text-based payment links; and view transactions, process refunds and download account activity. Birdseye Payments is included at no additional cost for current users of Birdeye's reputation and customer experience platform.

Sovos, a tax compliance software provider, has acquired the Chilean biometrics firm TOC Biometrics to bolster its own security (see the full story). The company produces software that uses facial recognition technology and fingerprint scanning to verify people's identities and facilitate secure e-signatures. The ever-increasing digitization of the business world has prompted rising concerns about protecting personal information and verifying people's identities, which motivated the acquisition.

Avalara, a tax software solutions company, and cloud-based accounting solution developer Xero have teamed up to create an automated sales tax solution (see the full story). Specific details on the project are scarce, since beta testing has not yet begun, but the end product  will use Avalara's tax content database and sales tax calculation engines, as well as Xero's ability to apply correct tax treatments to invoices and state-based reporting.