Evan Schuman

Switzerland's Migros is the country's largest retailer and employer, as well as the owner of a prominent local bank, giving the company an unconventional perspective on the costs and benefits of mobile payments.

Spain's largest bank, CaixaBank, has entered a payments joint venture with Global Payments and the Erste Group Bank for transactions in Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.

Person-to-person payments have been delivering huge improvements around the globe in areas where cash is difficult to use. But in countries where cash suffers little hardship—including the U.S., the U.K. and Canada—the P2P business case is very different.

When a cyberthief attacked Ashley Madison — a dating website for cheaters — with the stated goal of demonstrating that the site’s mechanism for deleting customer data didn’t work, it sent a signal that should be heeded by any company that handles sensitive data.

For the first time, physical goods are the most purchased items on mobile devices, according to a recent report from Javelin Strategy and Research. But the bigger takeaway is what this means for bringing mobile payments into other channels.

When a restaurant chain's senior marketing manager ran a location-based offer trial this summer, she was quite surprised to see a mobile conversion rate that topped 45% — which meant that almost one out of every two consumers who were pinged by the chain's mobile app drove to the store and made a purchase.

First Data has acquired a San Diego-based digital card distribution firm called Transaction Wireless Inc. (TWI), a company which, paired with First Data's 2014 purchase of Gyft, rounds out the company's gift card strategy.

After boosting security to accommodate Indian government demands, Uber is again going to be accepting payment cards for its services in India. It will accept payment cards starting this week, following a nine-month suspension.

In an attempt to encourage people to use MasterCard through Apple Pay, the card brand will have people at the 2015 MLB All-Star Game in Cincinnati, giving prizes to "the vast majority" of consumers who use Apple Pay with a MasterCard card.

MasterCard's decision to do a 500-person trial of facial recognition for payment authentication next month may seem like a bold move in security, but it's really taking aim at friction and CUs are watching the experiment.

MasterCard's decision to do a 500-person trial of facial recognition for payment authentication next month may seem like a bold move in security, but it's really taking aim at friction.

Lloyds Bank is exploring a way to use Near Field Communication to authenticate shoppers, but in a twist, it is using the mobile phones to receive – rather than send – the NFC signal.

Most merchants are trying to eliminate the barriers between their online and physical storefronts, yet the U.K. retailer John Lewis has put a small but meaningful barrier between these two channels.

Alibaba is reportedly upping its game in India, on the heels of its half-billion-dollar investment in Paytm in May.

Consumers in China are making more purchases online than in-store, prompting the country's retailers to support payment options that are normally associated with e-commerce.

A new version of Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) guidelines to be published by the PCI Council today will allow retailers—for the first time—to be able to create and seek certification for their own P2PE system, addressing a longstanding retailer concern about the earlier rules locking them into certain vendor relationships.

Although it's been widely suspected that merchant EMV compliance will be low in October when the liability shift deadline kicks in, a new Javelin Strategy & Research report is projecting as many as 75% of all merchants will not make the deadline.

As mobile payments fuel financial services in countries where traditional banking infrastructure is underwhelming, many in the payments world applaud.

Apple realizes that retailers are uniquely well-positioned to encourage mobile payments adoption. That's why the company's decision to start accepting retailer loyalty cards on Apple Pay before launching a loyalty program of its own makes good sense.

What good is having a mobile point of sale (mPOS) device if retailers glue it to the countertop? In a new IHL report that tries to size up the mPOS market, IHL points out that most merchants are happy to ignore the mobility inherent in their new technology.