Karen Epper Hoffman

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.

Shoppers in Poland are increasingly likely to buy fresh pierogi in Krakow or a bus ride in Gdansk with a prepaid card.

If you stop by bar Room77 in Berlin's Kreuzberg neighborhood for a beer, you can leave the euros in your wallet and instead pay with the digital currency Bitcoin—a growing phenomenon in Germany and other countries that are changing their views on the currency.

In a crowded field of Square-like vendors, the Berlin-based SumUp hopes to stand out by virtue of its executive experience, its strong partnerships and funding, and a more comprehensive role in developing its own hardware as well as its software and services.