Bailey Reutzel

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.

From mobile wallets to machine learning, from biometrics to Bitcoin, many examples of what the industry calls "emerging technology" have finally emerged. But change is happening slowly, as is usual in the complex financial services space.

Commerce Bancshares Kansas City, Mo., has found its customers want to save the planet, but don't want to put in too much effort, so the issuer partnered with Sustain:Green for cards that offset carbon emissions.

Commerce Bancshares Kansas City, Mo., has found its customers want to save the planet, but don't want to put in too much effort, so the issuer partnered with Sustain:Green for cards that offset carbon emissions.

Apple Inc. showed how to combine biometrics and tokenization in a mainstream product, and now companies of all sizes are working to build on this combination.

Global e-commerce and payment solutions provider Mozido has acquired a majority of NettCash, a Zimbabwe-based mobile wallet provider, to strengthen its foothold in Africa.

E-commerce fraud management platform provider Ethoca has raised $45 million in investment after significant growth last year.

As China loosens restrictions on international commerce, foreign merchants bringing their operations to China may be unprepared for the types of fraud they encounter.

Remittance provider Transfast is expanding its proprietary bank network across 23 African nations, enabling funds to be transferred directly into recipient bank accounts.

Some rules are black and white, which is why Sift Science has added the ability for clients to integrate automatic rules on top of its machine-learning fraud detection system.

Biometrics are a catalyst to streamline authentication, though the technology contains a vulnerability that Payfone thinks it can solve with the SIM cards that match consumers to a computing device such as a smartphone.

Banking experts are starting to look into cryptocurrency tech, and they are hedging their bets by finding uses for both the public blockchain models – like Bitcoin – and private models.

Business members of Best Price, which Walmart operates as in India, will have the ability to make payments via M-Pesa’s mobile wallet service.

Now the CEO of the mobile point of sale provider ShopKeep, Norm Merritt previously headed the global outsourcing company iQor and brings with him a few ideas about how to make big money by serving small merchants.

ACI Worldwide has added three board members with pervasive experience in financial services, following the retirement of other board members.

Chase Card Services has rebranded and redesigned its small business management mobile app, previously called Jot, to Ink from Chase.

Banks are particularly interested in fingerprint biometrics right now, likely due to the popularity of Apple’s Touch ID, which is used in Apple Pay.

As with everything else in Vegas, marketing to local commuters is a game of chance.