Michael Moeser

By adopting faster payments, businesses have more flexibility to make last-minute payments and emergency payrolls, or gain a larger window for early-payment discounts.

Younger consumers today have a very different view of, and utility for, general purpose bank and private label retail credit cards when compared to older generations.

The battle between Apple Pay and the Swiss banks' payment app, TWINT, is nearing a conclusion with Apple agreeing to no longer interfere at the point of sale when a consumer is attempting to make a purchase with TWINT.

While credit cards have been around since the 1950s and debit cards introduced years later, they both have become indispensable to the modern consumer. In fact, in certain retail sectors consumers can only use payment cards or mobile payments to make a purchase.

Alipay is upgrading its facial recognition technology to make it more accessible to users and to make it harder for crooks to game the system

Gifting is becoming more international and diverse, leading to a role for a a distributed ledger to streamline the user experience and bolster incentive marketing.

EMVCo has published the EMV 3-D Secure protocol and core functions specifications v2.2.0 to promote an improved consumer experience while supporting new authentication channels during e-commerce, mail order and telephone order transactions.

Regulatory and demographic shifts have altered the path to credit for younger American consumers. Those shifts have opened up lending opportunities, particularly at the digital point of sale. Merchants, startups and financial institutions are all vying for a share of this (potentially very) lucrative business.

Cloud-based point of sale company ShopKeep is in a fierce fintech battle to woo tech hungry restaurants, and has closed a $65 million round of equity and debt financing to bulk up technology and broaden its geographic footprint.

As the U.S. plays catch-up in contactless card adoption and biometric cards gain momentum, Mastercard senses an opportunity in the convergence.

Vocalink, a Mastercard company, signed a contract with Peru’s automated clearinghouse, Cámara de Compensación Electrónica, to modernize the country’s payment infrastructure, including support for real-time payments at all times.

Mastercard and white label payment software company Cardstream are partnering to accelerate the deployment of Mastercard’s Secure Remote Commerce (SRC)-ready Masterpass wallet and its “Pay by Bank” solution.

Credit and debit cards often overshadow prepaid gift cards, but the tables get turned during holidays, particularly as people get gift cards for themselves.

Kleiner Perkins and Ribbit Capital led an $80 million funding round in Viva Republica, the South Korean maker of the popular P2P payment app Toss.

KKR, which has a substantial financial services portfolio, has made a $75 million equity investment in Cross River Bank, part of an overall $100 million capital raise. Cross River will use the funds to expand the technology and compliance infrastructure that it provides to fintech organizations.

Chase and UATP, the airline-owned payment network, are collaborating to make Chase Pay an option on airline websites and mobile apps.

The voice biometrics firm Pindrop closed on its Series D fund raising round with $90 million in new capital to fuel expansion in voice authentication and security services for call centers and internet of things devices. It also added a new CFO and CRO.

Chinese payment companies have successfully lured merchants outside of China by enabling payments for Chinese tourists, a use case Tencent hopes will work in Japan, where rival Alipay lurks.

As payment stakeholders show an interest in using fingerprint technology to improve identity protection, NEXT Biometrics and MK Group plan to collaborate on biometric smart cards for banking and other applications.

In the past few years the Chinese government has loosened restrictions on foreign travel, enabling millions of its citizenry to visit foreign lands. Along with a greater ability to travel is the enhanced prosperity Chinese consumers have reaped at home — and now bring with them on vacations to purchase foreign goods.