John Adams

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.

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.

The demise of the plastic Google Wallet card may be bad news for Google and anyone who keeps a balance with its digital wallet, but Amex and Simple both see something familiar, and attractive, in the card's audience.

Western Union is beset on all sides by newer, nimbler companies wielding emerging technology to slice overhead from cross border payments, and it’s striking back by using its global bank relationships and huge infrastructure as an advantage.

There's a certain type of payment that's prone to fraud because the payer doesn't always know when a transaction is made, or even when the relationship starts.

Peer-to-peer lending startup Ledge incorporates on millennial staples like social networking and open development to get on its feet while relying on a road paved by the financial services 'establishment' to go mainstream.

BMO is betting that newly popular biometric authentication options can solve an age-old problem—the headaches business travelers face when managing smaller expenses.

Pep Boys' early results suggest there is something to the argument that successful mobile wallets are more about relationship-building and less about payments.

Air travel and mobile apps work well together, with many passengers already using digital boarding passes and having the option to use mobile wallets to pay for food in airports. But that relationship encounters turbulence once passengers board their planes.