John Adams

The technology vendor Nymi is drawing the attention of major companies like MasterCard and TD Bank, which are testing its contactless payments device that authenticates users by detecting their heartbeat.

Many payment companies are hosting hackathons to attract developer talent from outside their own ranks; MasterCard found that its own people are just as eager to bring their ideas to life.

Twitter is reportedly integrating with Shopify and other e-commerce companies to find merchants to support its buy button.

Target is deploying Bluetooth beacons to offer time-sensitive deals and product recommendations to shoppers in its stores, and it has more ambitious plans for the technology later in the year.

Health and wellness apps may not much in common with small business payments and merchant services, but it was the fitness-tracking craze that lit a fire under Intuit to build an Apple Watch app for its clients.

The U.S. card networks have been trying to gain a foothold in the huge Indian payments market for years, and both Visa and MasterCard have upped the ante in the past year by opening development centers to launch new payments technology directly into the market.

Even an entrepreneur who specializes in products for young people can be taken aback by how fast a new mobile technology becomes an everyday necessity for its users.

The swarm of new mobile payment initiatives has left traditional bank issuers with little choice but to shoehorn modern mobile wallets into their aging infrastructure.

DigiSeq is aggressively pushing a future of wearable computing, contending that payments should be baked into whatever device the consumer is using, rather than a specific device an issuer directly distributes or chooses to perform financial services.

The mobile point of sale market already seems overcrowded, but what's out there now is just a taste of what's to come, according to 451 Research.

Particularly in the fast-food industry, the menu of mobile capabilities is more super-sized than ever — and it's one of the rare payments trends that's actually being driven by the consumer.

PayPal has added new features to its invoicing product in a market filled with rivals that are similarly diversifying their services to lure small businesses.

MasterCard is cooperating with a European investigation into its fees, though it is questionable that this process will have a widespread effect on interchange, according to MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga.

PayPal this week released new research predicting a robust market in China for U.S. retailers, a bullish outlook that’s not being tempered by the vast selloffs in the Chinese financial markets.

Visa is partnering with and investing in Stripe, fueling the processing startup's international ambitions and product development while giving the card network added juice to build new technology.

The problem with basing a mobile point of sale system on Apple products is the merchant invariably pays Apple prices. E-Nabler aims to demonstrate that the same capabilities can be had on Android tablets and smartphones for at least half the price.

Starbucks and American Express are both using cross-merchant rewards to boost their own volume, but with a very different philosophy driving each company's program.

PayPal's gotten off to a rousing start as an independent company, but Visa CEO Charlie Scharf doesn't appear to be worried.

Loyalty programs are typically viewed as a consumer-facing marketing play, but the shift to mobile commerce is bringing these programs deeper into the supply chain.

Europe's clash over interchange rates is being spun into marketing gold by alternative payment companies like Seamless.