John Adams

There's plenty of criticism of the U.S. chip card migration, including its pace, the pressure on merchants to upgrade and the lingering confusion over how to use the cards. But Visa painted a more bullish picture of the migration.

A relatively new concept in the U.S., social payments are even newer in the U.K., where Circle hopes a collaboration with Barclays and a dash of blockchain will interest consumers in sending payments the same way the send tweets and texts.

It's not exactly clear what blockchain will amount to, but Capgemini is convinced it will be too good an opportunity to miss.

Despite the enormous hype and investment surrounding biometric technology, U.S. Bank's Elavon predicts that fingerprint, "selfie" and voice-based authentication will not render passwords obsolete anytime soon.

The heat of battle can forge some unlikely bonds, as demonstrated by MasterCard and Western Union’s collaboration with the four-year-old mobile financial service provider bKash, giving the incumbents a foothold in omnichannel payments and making them a bigger threat to other newcomers.

GORUCK sells what's called "rucking," something so unusual that one of the first things on its website is a link called "what is rucking?"

"Omnichannel" isn't just a buzzword to describe marketing and payments in different formats—it also applies to corporate dealmaking as merchant acquirers catch M&A fever.

Square will be the exclusive point of sale provider for Coachella, a large music festival, covering everything from tickets to concessions.

Seeing its opening in the mobile wallet market, Mobeewave's pushing a product that exists somewhere between the models of Square and Venmo, resurrecting a relatively old idea of having people pay each other by using their phones.

One of the biggest problems American travelers faced when chip cards became mainstream in Europe was buying tickets at self-serve kiosks in train stations. With no ticket attendant, travelers risked becoming stranded because their mag stripe cards weren't recognized.