Bailey Reutzel

The growth of China’s fintech scene is providing a less developed financial market with much-needed updates. But those improvements also serve as a stepping stone to bring Chinese fintech players to Western markets.

The leading US bitcoin exchange, Coinbase, has begun using Jumio’s face match software for digital identity, adding another layer of legacy financial services on top of something that was created as an alternative to the traditional system.

The fintech boom attracted a lot of new investors and in turn, billions of dollars into the market. But some of that money went to projects that haven’t lived up to the hype and in 2016, we’re starting to see a pullback.

The payment-enabled fingernails project -- and the surrounding media attention -- demonstrates that wearable payments have become more than just experimental.

If the financial services industry wants to avoid spending years aimlessly testing blockchain prototypes, it needs to focus on coming up with standards and working together.

One of the supposed perks of EMV chip-card upgrades was that the process would enable more modern payment options such as mobile wallets. In practice, however, EMV is closing as many doors as it opens.

Atlanta is flush with payment processors that handle more than 70% of the nation's transactions. These players now plan to expand their reach even further, hoping to make the southern city a fintech hub to rival Silicon Valley and New York.

Gift cards don't seem like the coolest technology in the payments world, but new and reinvented digital gifting platforms are changing the conversation – by borrowing text-messaging staples like emoji.

Nearly every social media site is experimenting with 'buy buttons' today, but consumers' actual buying habits sometimes challenge the expectations of merchants and platform providers.

As one of the fastest growing payment companies, all eyes are on Stripe. But if the industry expects the company to launch a sexy, new application they're unlikely to get it.