John Adams

For American Express' Nik Sathe, developers with no experience in the payments industry are among the best to hire.

Once known as peer-to-peer, online marketplace lending grew phenomenally and evolved rapidly in 2014, as capital flooded in from institutional investors and traditional bankers sat up and took notice.

Optimal Payments has released a series of onboarding and developer options in an attempt to stay nimble amid the growing market of companies that use application programming interfaces (APIs) to offer transaction capabilities to retailers.

Samsung is planning to launch a contactless mobile payment system in 2015 in partnership with payment company LoopPay, tech news site ReCode reported Dec. 16.

After spending 2014 digging out of fiscal slump, Verifone is setting up for an aggressive product rollout in the year ahead as it recovery shifts into high gear.

Initiatives such as Apple Pay and the upcoming CurrentC wallet are placing pressure on banks and retailers to accommodate the higher transaction speed, volume and performance expected on smartphones and tablets.

As mobile wallet providers seek to add value to their services in the payments market, account aggregator Yodlee says it has a data analysis tool that will help that expansion.

A new Bluetooth standard limits how beacons can track and deliver messages to people near stores, but this may not be a death knell to proximity-based payments and marketing.

As card networks develop tokens to stand in for account numbers in online and mobile commerce, they may be able to standardize the experience across all companies that handle payments, said Mike Matan, head of global network business at American Express.

MasterCard is investing in and partnering with card technology company Dynamics to embed greater function into U.S. payment cards, a mission that has sputtered in past years.

MasterCard is investing in and partnering with card technology company Dynamics to embed greater function into U.S. payment cards, a mission that has sputtered in past years.

Visa and Kofax are attempting to simplify complex invoice payments in Asia by introducing technology into processes that have long been handled manually.

Wearable computing is very much a nascent market, but by using flexible programming methods PNC hopes to be ready to deploy payments apps when the technology takes off.

Payments innovation normally migrates to the U.S. from Canada, which is at a more advanced stage of deployment with EMV-chip cards and other technology. But that's not the case for business-to-business payments.

Nearly four years ago, U.S. Bancorp debuted a medical bracelet that could also make payments. The product was short-lived, but the bank is taking a fresh look at the advancement of wearable technology in recent years and its potential for payments and other financial functions.

Monitise has picked up some well-heeled backers to fuel its move into global markets, as MasterCard, Telefonica and Santander join to take a stake in the mobile technology company.

Toronto's new express train will provide a mobile ticketing option, though whether that technology can transfer to the rest of the city's transit system remains to be seen.

Square is adding global support for its Register merchant services app, a move that allows the company to measure demand in new markets before investing in the distribution of its hardware and other services.

PayPal's support of the Pebble smartwatch, an older and less expensive alternative to the Apple Watch and Android Wear watches, signals the acceleration of mobile payments in devices other than smartphones.

It's not just merchants, issuers and technology companies that are using mobile technology to sell new payment services. As a business software provider, Intuit has been uniquely positioned to link its products to a number of payment initiatives.