Kate Fitzgerald

A group of tourists visiting Finland from China recently concluded a completely cashless trip sponsored by Alipay, which is claiming Finland is the first country where Chinese visitors can manage and pay for all aspects of travel solely using its mobile wallet.

The bank's commitment in the last couple of years to an "agile" environment of rapid testing and learning produced answers within a couple of months.

Sometimes an idea is ahead of its time. Many of the most ambitious products in fintech were dismissed as absurd or overambitious at the time — only to feel perfectly normal years later as culture and consumer habits evolved.

Mastercard knows the more time consumers spend on their mobile devices—often deliberately blocking ads—the less likely they are to see its iconic “Priceless” ads, even if those ads support a charitable cause.

Handle Financial’s online bill-payment service Prism has turned on a new feature enabling consumers to pay bills in real time from any of 11,000 U.S. billers via credit or debit cards, even when those options aren’t directly supported by the biller.

Despite millions spent on promotions and marketing for Apple Pay and other proprietary options from banks, mobile payments volume is still weak.

About a decade after its launch, Cambodia-based mobile money provider Wing has added a virtual prepaid Mastercard to its platform, enabling its audience of unbanked and underbanked consumers to shop online.

Wirecard is working with Fortress GB on new payments technology that will enable fans of two U.K.-based football clubs to earn points and cash-back rewards when making purchases inside stadiums at sporting events — and will track their spending data to decide on future offers.

MoviePass has pulled its participation from 10 AMC movie theaters following disagreement over the theaters’ support of MoviePass’ $9.95 monthly movie subscription model, which uses a Mastercard to guarantee payment through its app.

Sometimes an idea is ahead of its time. Many of the most ambitious products in payments and fintech were dismissed as absurd or over-ambitious at the time — only to feel perfectly normal years later as culture and consumer habits evolved.

The hunt for solid credit card customers is driving issuers to try creative new approaches, including digging deeper for good prospects who fall outside the usual parameters of U.S. credit scoring models.

Tightening its connections to restaurants with a brisk delivery business, Square has acquired a longstanding Dallas-based local food delivery service to add to its Caviar food-ordering platform.

Tender Armor, which offers a fraud-prevention tool that requires consumers to enter a special code for each online purchase, has attracted private equity funding to expand its development three years after the company’s inception.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has launched an application programming interface (API) gateway available to third-party fintech providers, as part of preparations for Europe’s PSD2 regulations that went into effect this month.

Developers of mobile point of sale solutions now have a path to build secure applications to support PIN entry on tablets and smartphones, following the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council’s latest update.

A fintech investment surge is underway across Europe. What’s unknown is how the looming Brexit situation may affect the U.K.’s strong fintech momentum, and where exactly funds would flow if talent and startups flee Britain.

Wirecard has introduced a feature that uses payments data to shape marketing offers and loyalty programs in the travel industry.

E-commerce merchants battling fraud that comes from multiple directions often need to use several different solutions that don’t always mesh well, bogging down the checkout process and inadvertently blocking good transactions.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has streamlined its virtual cards so that commercial purchasing clients may connect directly to the bank’s virtual card system and create single-use accounts in real time.

Paytronix Systems has received a $65 million private equity investment from Great Hill Partners to power its development of payment and loyalty systems for restaurants.