John Adams

Capital One's rewards and marketing may cause some short-term performance issues, but the institution's aggressive posture is necessary in the current environment, the company's CEO said.

Capital One's rewards and marketing may cause some short-term performance issues, but the institution's aggressive posture is necessary in the current environment, the company's CEO said.

The hurdles to broader EMV adoption in the U.S. have many causes, but to the consumer the end result is typically the same: A longer payment process with no immediate gain.

Bitcoin and similar digital currencies are often portrayed as enablers of faster payments, but there are other ways to execute fast international transfers.

China's sheer size is an obvious attraction for companies involved in global payments and commerce, but the country poses hurdles that even giants like MasterCard and Visa find vexing.

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.