John Adams

Rent payments are among the few lingering paper-based transactions, though a subset of the payments industry is shaking the trees to find ways to change that.

Brightwell is attempting to carve out a niche in the crowded prepaid card market by focusing on reducing the amount of cash carried at sea by ships' crew members.

Modern payment terminals are streamlining the update process for merchants by enabling instant updates of their capabilities, and U.S. Bank is taking advantage of this technology to rapidly get new offerings to market.

Fresh off its success in the Philippines, Seattle-based transfer company Remitly is using mobile security and other digital features to tap other markets, where an endless supply of competitors and fraudsters await it.

PayPal will pay a $7.7 million fine for processing payments from customers that have ties to sanctioned parties on a U.S. Government list.

Keith Rabois, the former chief operating officer of Square who resigned that role in 2013, will leave Xoom's board of directors on May 28.

Waffle House is proudly behind the curve—its wait staff verbally calls in cook-to-order meals, it didn't take credit cards until 2006, and it has long used old-fashioned cash registers.

Google's attempt to capture the "stickiest" part of many online banking relationships could eventually help put it at the financial center of the consumer's life.

PayPal will pay a $7.7 million fine for processing payments from customers that have ties to sanctioned parties on a U.S. Government list.

Ken Tye, senior vice president and chief information officer at Total Systems Services, will retire at the end of September, marking the departure of another long-time executive at the Columbus, Ga.-based processor.

Google's planned integration of bill pay and presentment with its immensely popular Gmail service could quickly scoop away one of the stickiest offerings of online banking sites.

Selfies, or self-portraits typically taken with a smartphone's camera, are an all-too-common consumer habit. And the practice is now migrating to formal business use, such as for authentication.

Merchant acquirers are required to respond to mobile's impact in an almost infinite number of ways, and in many cases deem acquisition the best and fastest play to diversify beyond payments.

Fast-developing technologies are dumping fresh risk on a payments industry already reeling from a parade of data breaches, placing more pressure on cross-industry efforts to improve security.

Matt Swann, who was in charge of Amazon Register and the defunct Amazon Wallet, has left Amazon.com for a role at Citigroup, according to a report by TechCrunch.

Flint Mobile is joining the many technology companies that are evolving from their roots as payment providers to become enablers of a broad range of services.

TD Bank is expanding its prepaid offerings to meet higher demand from upmarket consumers and to counter competition from rival issuers.

The megabank-led clearXchange digital payment network, which now counts U.S. Bank as a participant, plans to use its considerable reach in the coming year to diversify its capabilities while also pushing for collaboration among other providers.

Square's decision to scuttle its consumer-facing Order app shines an uncomfortable spotlight on the challenges inherent in creating technology that appeals to both consumers and merchants.

A lot of change in the payments business is unavoidable, such as EMV-chip cards and mobile commerce, so the high-tech card maker Stratos plans to replace its cards each year as part of a membership program.