John Adams

MasterCard is unveiling an app that takes the Internet of Things to its logical extreme, stopping only one step short of becoming Star Trek's instant food replicator.

Transportation is one of the most obvious venues for mobile transactions, though it can also be one of the most difficult, given the legacy infrastructure and the vast scale of most systems.

Glacier Restaurants, having examined the wide array of choices to tap mobile technology, has concluded that the best entry-level mobile transaction is the digital gift card.

If dead men tell no tales, that makes identity theft of deceased account holders all the harder for card issuers to combat, particularly when the perpetrators are bank insiders.

If dead men tell no tales, that makes identity theft of deceased account holders all the harder for card issuers to combat, particularly when the perpetrators are bank insiders.

The lowest-hanging fruit for payments efficiency is governments, which handle huge volumes of payments and generally lag private corporate payments in implementing automated processing.

Fresh off the announcement of Walmart Pay, fellow retail chain and Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) member Target is planning its own mobile payment system, according to CNBC.

Uber's ride sharing app is generally considered less of a threat to payment processors than to the Taxi and Limousine Commission, but the ease of Uber's payment process may prompt consumers to grow frustrated with any process that forces them through a traditional checkout page.

Uber has long taught that the best way to get consumers to pay with a mobile device is to make the payment almost invisible. Now, with the help of Facebook and Braintree, Uber is applying that philosophy to the rest of its business — and if Facebook has its way, other companies will again follow Uber's example.

One of the more perplexing elements of the slow, long-awaited march to EMV-chip cards in the U.S. is the lack of awareness that still pervades among merchants and consumers alike.