Evan Schuman

Beacons—those little Bluetooth mechanisms stores use to beam ads to shoppers' phones—may someday play a critical role in payments. But the technology is still years away from being a practical alternative to cards and NFC-based mobile wallets.

Paytm, a major mobile wallet in India with backing from China's Alibaba, is gaining acceptance through restaurants like Domino's and setting the foundation for a larger Alibaba presence in the country.

Visa has tapped Google research scientist Min Wang to run Visa Research Labs, an organization designed to expand Visa's development capabilities worldwide.

On Amazon.com, shoppers can spend hours browsing and buying products, watching movies and listening to music; on the Apple Watch, however, Amazon is challenged to complete all interactions in a matter of seconds.

MCX CEO Dekkers Davidson has left the merchant-led mobile payments initiative, and will be replaced on an interim basis by Brian Mooney, a former Bank of America and First Data payments executive.

Best Buy's move to accept Apple Pay in its stores is the clearest public sign yet that the Merchant Customer Exchange has radically altered its vision of and ambitions regarding a retailer mobile wallet.

Success seems to come easily for Starbucks' mobile payment efforts, but only because the company did its heavy lifting elsewhere.

Despite a series of challenges and missteps from Google Wallet's earliest days, the app has tightened its grip on the Android ecosystem and squeezed out the competition — and Google must now decide whether Apple Pay is its next target or its most unlikely ally.

Google Wallet is making a significant change in how it handles funds, in the latest of a series of moves that gives Google a stronger footing against Apple Pay's rising tide.

Google Wallet is making a significant change in how it handles funds, in the latest of a series of moves that gives Google a stronger footing against Apple Pay's rising tide.

Amazon long ago redesigned the way consumers shop and pay online, and it envisions a retail environment where payments happen just as seamlessly and shoppers never even need to slow down to check out.

With ample fueling from mobile transactions, the potential for converting point of sale data into CRM and marketing data is massive. But as full of potential as this merger is across all retail purchases, it's particularly strong down market—and the smaller the business, the better.

Two companies are working to make gift cards not only interactive, but almost self-aware.

Virtual Piggy, owner of the youth payment service called Oink, announced April 10 it had hired a "financial advisor to explore strategic alternatives," which often means a company may soon seek a buyer or investor.

Square's heavy focus on merchant services now includes introductory marketing tools aimed at small businesses already using the mobile point of sale company to email coupons to customers based on how often they visit a store.

In the last two months, the CEO of a major national restaurant payments service has seen surprising uptake of Apple Pay among the company's restaurant clients.

Groupon may not have its own mobile wallet, but it has a strong foundation to build on: The 110 million downloads of its daily-discount app, plus the merchants using its Breadcrumb mobile point of sale system.

When Toronto's Davis and Henderson agreed to spend almost $1.3 billion for Fundtech—the Canadian company's ninth and largest acquisition—it addressed its need not merely for global diversification, but also for a much more streamlined payments technology strategy.

Major Indian payments vendor Oxigen is planning for some serious expansion—to the tune of 1,500 new hires and roughly $200 million in new fundraising by June—as it starts focusing on suburban and rural India especially in east and central India, according to a PTI report in Livemint.

When it comes to biometric authentication, Samsung is looking way beyond fingerprints.