Kate Fitzgerald

London is battling other cities, which are trying to use the political uncertainty of the U.K.'s exit from the European Union to lure payment startups and other financial technology companies.

The gig economy is one of the most demanding business sectors in terms of technology, speed and security. All of these factors play into how these companies handle payments.

Many companies in financial services say they want to be the next Uber. But the reverse may also be true, with the ride-sharing company adding a cobrand card that can be managed from within the Uber app.

HSBC Bank USA is the latest to issue a credit card made of metal, designed for affluent customers who travel often.

Giving merchants direct access to third-party software isn’t new—First Data’s Clover unit introduced the concept three years ago—but Vantiv is giving its approach a custom-development spin with an app marketplace.

The U.S. and Canada are far behind Europe and Asia in contactless adoption in general. A handful of mass transit agencies are stirring hopes about NFC fare payments, but even these cities are taking a cautious approach to open-loop payments.

India’s push to build a broad biometrics-based consumer identity database—now 1 billion strong—has been a boon to Paytm and other mobile payments providers leveraging Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the open-architecture structure supported by India’s government.

Facebook Messenger now supports person-to-person payments and customer service for PayPal, expanding the funding choices for repaying friends and family and the channels available to PayPal users sending P-to-P payments.

In recent years, there's been a lot of activity in payments M&A, but a few deals stand out — some for their size, and others for their ability to transform both parties in a fundamental way.

The move creates more room for developers to work on new payment types and build additional use cases.