John Adams

Square, which has been scrambling to add fee-based services to pad the revenue it gets from mobile payments, faces a formidable new challenge in Amazon's launch of a rival mobile card reader.

Fleet card provider FleetCor's planning a major push into B2B electronic payments, and hopes to get a substantial boost from its planned $3.45 billion acquisition of Comdata.

Square recently ended a plastic card project out of concerns it would cause friction with the payment company's financial partners, according to Fast Company.

Square Appointments, the company's latest fee-based product, is the first in its lineup that can be used by merchants who do not also use Square to accept payments.

As Powa begins integrating its new point of sale system with vendor partners, the company expects its experience with EMV-chip acceptance to be a selling point.

It's hard to design a Disney's "Frozen" cake with a cash register, but it works like magic with a tablet, according to Dallas-area Society Bakery.

In the age of digital commerce, more business are using third parties to manage operations, increasing the risk to any payments data they handle, says the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

As computing devices get closer to the body, Westpac New Zealand is exploring how wearables such as smartwatches and Google Glass can be used for payments and other financial services.

The Oyster contactless payment card is no longer the only fish in the sea for London's mass transit network, which will accept contactless payments via credit and debit cards by mid-September.

Comerica has hired payments processor Vantiv as the financial institution continues a legal battle stemming from a discontinued joint venture with Global Payments, which a judge says has taken a "hostile attitude" toward the bank.

In politics, every penny counts to secure a candidate's position in office. Bitcoin's low cost of acceptance, accompanied by increasing clarity from regulators over its role in campaigns, is making it a more appealing choice for accepting donations.

The Justice Department's legal case against American Express will not benefit consumers and will weaken competition, said Jeff Campbell, executive vice president and CFO of American Express.

Westpac New Zealand plans to leverage mobile technology on several fronts in the coming year, powering contactless payments while maintaining more control over customer relationships than it would have if it signed on to a telco-led venture.

The Justice Department's legal case against American Express will not benefit consumers and will weaken competition, said Jeff Campbell, executive vice president and CFO of American Express.

First Data is making a push into offline and online gambling payments processing, providing new services that cover a riskier set of transactions than those it already handles for businesses that operate casinos.

The credit union-driven CU Wallet is mindful that if it comes on too strong with its mobile-payment pitch, consumers will be turned off.

PayPal will support the new Amazon Fire phone, which went on sale this week, in the latest move by the eBay subsidiary to make sure it has an app for any newly launched mobile device.

Zing is releasing an iPad app that leverages Web hosted technology to access a large selection of business functions through the point of sale.

Visa, which just revamped its digital payment system, will introduce secure "tokens" in September to replace the 16-digit account number for online payments.

Happy Belly Curbside Kitchen, which operates out of food trucks, is planning to become a sit-down restaurant within the next year and is relying on mobile point of sale technology to make the transition.