David Heun

2017 promises to be a defining year for many in the payments industry. Here's a look at what to expect.

Nearly two-thirds of U.S. cardholders are familiar with at least one form of mobile payment, marking an awareness trend that continues to rise and could ultimately translate to higher adoption and usage rates.

BillGO says it has seen a 65% jump in customers signing up for its bill-pay app since its launch in late October, and it predicts a payment processor partnership with GlobalOnePay will bring scale it hadn't previously enjoyed.

Payments software provider Ezetap says an agreement with Pax Global Technology Ltd. will bring "hundreds of thousands" of mobile and mini point-of-sale terminals to India as the country lessens its use of cash.

An agreement between First Global Data and India's Metro Infrasys will bring a one-click mobile payment option to drivers using the country's tollways.

Payment processors have eyed the gambling industry as a just-out-of-reach gold mine for the past few years, especially with the expansion of online and mobile gaming, but the warning signs have always been very large.

Carrier billing provider Boku says it has expanded its agreement with Microsoft to provide services for the first time in France to all Windows 10 devices on the Orange France network.

Continuing a fast global expansion pace for both companies, digital money transfer providers WorldRemit and Xpress Money are partnering to open new remittance routes to Southeast Asia.

Facing security challenges at its member banks and competition from other tech providers, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication [Swift] plans to put its best foot forward in 2017.

Online shoppers can expect fraudsters to be at the height of their creativity during the 2016 holiday season.

Banks are often taken for granted in digital wallets, treated as a "dumb pipe" for funding another account. PayPal is working to provide a more welcoming atmosphere with deals recently announced with Citigroup, FIS and two other banks.

Consumers have long had options to pay for high-value purchases through monthly installments, but payments providers — from PayPal to Mastercard — have typically focused on other ways to lift purchase volume.

The percentage of EMV transactions in the United States is miniscule compared to other parts of the world, but the migration to chip cards in the U.S. is lifting the technology's global growth — now at 42.4% of all card transactions.

In expanding its work with Facebook, American Express has introduced the Add a Card feature on its bot for Facebook Messenger.

Too many data breach reports show that companies suffering compromises were unaware that cardholder data was present in their systems. The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council wants to fix this.

LevelUp has worked mostly with smaller merchants. It's relationship with the merchant-focused Chase Pay will give it access to a much larger group of retailers.

Large banks will soon launch Zelle, their person-to-person payments app. Will it succeed or will it be another name on a growing list of such platforms that never panned out?

The potential user base is huge. Tencent Holdings has 846 million global monthly active-user WeChat accounts, and more than 300 million have linked bank cards.

Consumer tastes for person-to-person payment apps differ widely from one market to another, and also change rapidly over time.

The collaboration gives Apple Pay an entry into the freelance payment market, an industry that's growing fast but underserved.