Karen Epper Hoffman

Throughout Europe and Asia in particular, ATMs are being used to distribute an increasingly wide array of financial and non-financial products and services.

Throughout Europe and Asia in particular, ATMs are being used to distribute an increasingly wide array of financial and non-financial products and services. This is in sharp contrast to the U.S., where most advanced ATMs offer the same set of banking-related features.

Virtual credit cards, which have struggled with adoption in other regions, are picking up steam in India as a means to combat online fraud.

Despite a name that makes it sound like a droid from "Star Wars," 2C2P has grown to be a serious contender in Southeast Asia's burgeoning alternative payments market.

Widely regarded as a titan of online payments in the United States, PayPal has built a significant business in Europe as well. But is its online payments business a strong foundation for the still-nascent mobile money market here?

India's merchants are beginning to embrace mobile card readers, fueled by the nation's growing dependence on payment cards and smartphones.

As escalating political tensions over the Ukraine crisis leave Russia increasingly isolated, the country may have to look internally for a new payment system.

Nigeria is steadily adding technology to tackle its fraud and risk problems, improving the country's reputation in the international payments landscape.

Vodafone's M-Pesa mobile money service, known for quickly developing a devout following of users in Africa, will help the telecom expand in parts of Europe that its more high-tech payment offerings can't reach.

The digital revolution has yet to sweep up the money remittance business as it has other retail payments services, but change is coming fast.

Alipay, created a decade ago as the payments unit for China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and since spun off, has established itself as a world leader in online and mobile payments.

Three months after coming to light, the massive exposure of 40 million card accounts at Target Corp. still has the payments industry and consumers talking about what should be done to prevent this happening again. In the United States, that is.

Contactless card payments are building a fan base in the United Kingdom, where their use has spiked in the past year, but the product is still a long way from replacing magnetic-stripe cards.

Three months after coming to light, the massive exposure of 40 million card accounts at Target Corp. still has the payments industry and consumers talking about what should be done to prevent this happening again. In the United States, that is.

CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski wants his company, Klarna AB, to be the Apple of European payments. That is to say, he is trying to earn a reputation for being "better than the rest in every small detail… of technology and innovation."

Shopping and banking on a mobile device has always been clunky, as processes designed for a full screen and keyboard have often been crushed inelegantly to fit a smartphone's much smaller screen.

Shopping and banking on a mobile device has always been clunky, as processes designed for a full screen and keyboard have often been crushed inelegantly to fit a smartphone's much smaller screen.

With a population of 1.35 billion people, more than half of whom already use mobile services, the People's Republic of China represents the largest and perhaps the most attractive, if somewhat challenging, market for mobile commerce on Earth.

The newest member of the European Union (as of July), the Republic of Croatia is also relatively new to Near Field Communication-based mobile payments, which the nation's transit and mobile companies began publicly testing this year.

The Republic of Kenya is among the latest countries to make the move to EMV-chip cards, as its local banks and processors mount an ambitious campaign to transition the smart-card standard by early next year in a move to combat fast-rising fraud.