John Adams

Samsung Pay's ability to allow mobile payments while mimicking plastic card transactions will make it harder for rivals and merchants to strike back by disabling NFC at the point of sale when the system debuts later this year.

CO-OP Financial Services has vastly expanded its real time person to person payments reach, adding a credit union-led alternative to the faster payment models being pursued by banks.

Visa has agreed to buy marketing and payments company TrialPay as part of the card network's broader strategy to improve merchant relationships.

Pamela Joseph, U.S. Bancorp's vice chair of payment services and a 10-year veteran of the Minneapolis-based bank, plans to retire in mid-2015.

Pamela Joseph, U.S. Bancorp's vice chair of payment services and a ten-year veteran of the Minneapolis-based bank, plans to retire in mid-2015.

Apple Pay has begun its foray into airlines, deploying about 3,500 iPad minis that can accept mobile payments, but it is making a slow approach to the industry.

Google plans to release a new set of Android-based payment developer tools at its I/O conference in May, according to a report by the tech news site Ars Technica.

Brazil's embrace of digital commerce is providing juice for Santander's university smart-card program, which is growing by leaps and bounds as it lays the groundwork for the mobile channel.

First Data is releasing new services that stem from a strategic shift that followed the company's restructuring over the past year.

Home meal-prep delivery company PeachDish is working with Bitcoin processor BitPay to enable payments in the virtual currency.

MasterCard is aggressively pursuing emerging markets, and in early February opened a technology hub in Pune, India to compete with the entrenched domestic payment networks.

Starbucks has integrated its app with technology from corporate spending management company Concur, demonstrating the vast new uses of the coffee chain's mobile commerce offering.

Samsung's plan to acquire LoopPay gives the mobile phone maker a technology that can reach more merchants faster than Near Field Communication (NFC), the technology used by Apple Pay and Google Wallet.

Mobile banking technology company Monitise is by all appearances for sale, though it may have to get creative to find a buyer.

MasterCard is testing whether the time is finally right for biometric authentication to take over as the standard of customer-facing security.

American Express will certainly suffer when its 16-year cobranding deal with Costco ends in 2016, but its executives will spend the next year building up the card brand's digital payment products to create enough opportunities to ease the company's short-term pain and guarantee its long-term health.

American Express will certainly suffer when its 16-year cobranding deal with Costco ends in 2016, but its executives will spend the next year building up the card brand's digital payment products to create enough opportunities to ease the company's short-term pain and guarantee its long-term health.

PayPal and Apple are well positioned as the mobile wallet race shifts from pure payments to broader services such as marketing and aggregation, according to Forrester Research.

Google employees are testing a service that lets them make payments by speaking their initials to the cashier, according to an article in The Information.

There's an almost endless list of reasons for payment companies to avoid doing business in Russia, but the opportunities are just as vast.