John Adams

As the incumbents gets bigger, the innovation that created the urgency continues unabated.

Transit systems have become an outlet for new payment technology for both challenger fintechs and incumbents, with terminal maker Ingenico targeting North America for open loop transit payments in the next year.

Progress in the trade war is welcome news for Mastercard’s ambitions in China, though the coronavirus jeopardizes the rosy outlook.

Facebooks’ Libra cryptocurrency project has been losing high-profile support for months, but the loss of Vodafone may be its most critical.

Two of the largest U.S. fueling station chains are adopting technology that separates the act of pumping gas from the transaction — and in the process, enabling that the purchase of fuel to become a gateway to in-car shopping.

Square's merchants have shown early interest in cryptocurrency payments, and if merchants accept this new concept, it could exist along with other Square services to support numerous use cases, including broader financial services.

Even in mature markets, consumers may not feel very connected to their payment cards. This is making issuers more reliant on selling data-driven experiences over simple transaction processing.

The future of brick and mortar retail is somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. Buried beneath a virtual sea in a place once called Xanadu is an underwater version of New York, a nautical Times Square where marquees scream “Piranha of the Opera,” and “Krill Grill.”

By experimenting with palm-print hand wave transactions, Amazon is putting its resources behind another work-in-progress technology that traditional retailers will almost certainly have to invest in just to keep pace.

Last week, Indian regulators ordered an antitrust probe of Walmart and Amazon while Jeff Bezos and other Amazon execs traveled to New Delhi to tout a $1 billion investment to digitize local businesses. The message is U.S. investment is welcome, as long as U.S.-driven data mining is kept at bay.