Kate Fitzgerald

Synchrony Financial designed its first voice assistant technology for Amazon Alexa around Amazon’s store card, serving as a template for the private-label card issuer’s other retail clients.

Data breaches have become routine, but the public reaction to these events is changing. Consumers are increasingly wary of sharing their information — just ask Mark Zuckerberg — and this trend raises the stakes for all financial institutions and merchants.

Barclays is one of the top five cobranded card issuers in the U.S., but because the bank has no branch network it must use unconventional marketing approaches — and unique technological innovations — to win customers.

Though financial institutions with online bill payment services still command the largest share of the bill payment market, it’s a category with many friction points ripe for disruption.

Younger adults who regularly use mobile payments are more likely to take financial risks and rack up fees, according to a new financial literacy study by the George Washington University School of Business.

In the ongoing quest to replace PINs and passwords, Mastercard has introduced a kit enabling consumers to register their own fingerprint on a biometric card at home, bypassing the need to visit a bank.

Younger adults who regularly use mobile payments are more likely to take financial risks and rack up fees, according to a new financial literacy study by the George Washington University School of Business.

Bill payment proved too unwieldy for Intuit’s personal finance app Mint, and the feature will be discontinued in June, about 18 months after it launched.

Mastercard has appointed Caroline Louveaux, one of its longtime data privacy experts, to be chief privacy officer, operating from the company’s offices in Brussels.

E-commerce platform Magento is giving merchants the option to activate Klarna instant credit for online checkouts.

Ant Financial Services Group has formed a strategic partnership with bKash Limited, the mobile payments platform Bangladesh’s central bank established to expand financial inclusion.

PayPal and Barclays have formed a strategic partnership enabling Barclays customers in the U.K. and U.S. to manage their Barclays and PayPal accounts within each app.

U.S. Bank has formed a partnership with insurance claims software provider Enservio to simplify processes for paying or collecting insurance settlements.

Consumers enrolled in Denmark’s Dankort domestic payments scheme may sign up to make payments using only their finger in a pilot that the payments firm Nets is conducting in Copenhagen.

The partnership PayPal announced last year with Samsung Pay has come to fruition, with PayPal rolling out a new capability enabling its users to make purchases at any store that accepts cards via Samsung Pay.

Walmart has also used Sam's Club's Scan & Go fast checkout feature and even robots in an attempt to shorten queues and improve the payment experience.

Though financial institutions with online bill payment services still command the largest share of the bill payment market, it’s a category with many friction points ripe for disruption.

Before Paytm became one of India's most popular mobile wallets, it was a little-known bill payment app that launched in 2011 and spread by word of mouth. Now Paytm is revisiting that history in Canada, though its challenges in North America are very different than what it faced in India.

The bank-led P2P service Zelle is on track to move more than $100 billion at its first anniversary in June — a milestone that is at odds with overall consumer awareness of digital P2P options.

Wirecard has expanded capabilities of its boon digital payment app by partnering with Fitbit so customers in Europe may make contactless payments with the Fitbit Ionic or Fitbit Versa smartwatch models.