Kate Fitzgerald

How do you get to the top of the payments stack at one of the nation’s preeminent digital-forward banks? You reach for every challenging opportunity you see, according to Reetika Grewal, head of payments strategy and solutions at Silicon Valley Bank.

As chief fraud policy and control officer for Early Warning, it’s Donna Turner’s job to ensure security when consumers enroll through the Zelle app, and protect consumers and participating banks when users zap payments to recipients at different institutions.

This year, as PaymentsSource honors The Most Influential Women in Payments, a new pattern has emerged. This year's list recognizes the contributions of entrepreneurs who took their ideas directly to market, showcasing new ways of handling business in an industry that is forced to quickly adapt to rapid changes in technology and global culture.

It still surprises Debbie Gamble that a chance summer job she took at a bank turned into nearly a 30-year career leading to her current post influencing Canada’s payments technology at Interac, the national debit system.

Trustly, a Stockholm-based startup whose technology enables cross-border and online payments, has partnered with optile, a German online payments company, to expand the number of European merchants it supports for direct online bank payments.

Google is reportedly working with a number of European banks to explore opportunities arising from PSD2.

Mastercard’s relentless push to streamline payments with digital technology is affecting the structure of its entire organization.

Sentbe, a South Korean international money-transfer company, is expanding its payout options and market reach in a partnership with the mobile cross-border payments network TransferTo.

Comdata, a major issuer of fuel cards in North America, has established a partnership with payments processor Noventis to expand the range of Comdata’s suppliers that can accept payments through virtual cards to further reduce reliance on paper checks.

Fiserv is rolling out a fraud-detection and decisioning service for issuers from Mastercard that aims to increase the accuracy of card transactions they approve or reject based on potential fraud.

U.S. card issuers are adding contactless technology to credit and debit cards — but they are doing so in slow, small steps.

RecargaPay, an eight-year-old mobile payments platform targeting unbanked and underbanked consumers in Brazil, has secured $22 million in funding to reach more users and merchants.

Ant Financial’s Alipay is working with the Canadian payments processor Motion Pay Technology to push Ant's geographic reach in North America.

WorldRemit has launched international remittance services in New York, one of the last big U.S. markets where it lacked a money transmitter license, positioning the company for a growth surge this year.

The rise of online and mobile commerce is forcing merchants to rapidly re-engineer their checkout options, while keeping an eye on emerging models that leverage artificial intelligence to streamline shopping — or bypass the store checkout process altogether, like Amazon Go.

In the developing world, connecting payments to the Internet of Things could have an immediate and transformative effect on people’s lives.

Wirecard has partnered with SES-imagotag, which makes electronic shelf-labeling systems, for a new technology enabling consumers to buy products directly from store shelves with their smartphones.

In Zelle’s national advertising campaign, the bank-run P-to-P network spotlights consumers paying a personal trainer, a babysitter and a neighbor. It sets an expectation that Zelle can be used like a credit card, and scammers have figured out how to exploit this trust.

NMI, which provides payments gateway services for resellers of payment services, has purchased U.K.-based Creditcall to expand its EMV and contactless capabilities so it can support retail, e-commerce, mobile and unattended payments through a single platform.

Payments processor Shift4 Payments has acquired CurvePay, an independent sales organization focused on the taxi industry, the latest in a string of recent acquisitions.