Europe

Maybe it's coincidence, or maybe it's progress — in recent weeks, a number of large payment networks have suffered brief but widespread outages, particularly in Europe.

Mastercard and Worldpay are embarking on a strong push to promote Mastercard's Pay by Bank system, which will likely face a deluge of competition under the updated Payment Services Directive (PSD2), which took effect this year.

Overreliance on the smartphone risks mistaking device authentication for user authentication.

Mastercard has become the latest major card network to suffer a high profile crash. With its Thursday incident coming hard on the heels of Visa’s crash last month many experts wonder if blockchain technology could prevent future card network outages.

Financial institutions are beginning to get on board with the global fight against climate change, but they are still trailing pension funds and insurance companies in putting these concerns into action.

When GDPR went into effect in May, it was expected that the European law would touch a lot of U.S. payment companies because of their international scope. Now it's clear that even purely domestic U.S. firms will have to adhere to some version of the data-privacy law.

A money-laundering scandal at Denmark's largest bank has prompted increased regulatory scrutiny at larger banks, so criminals may try to filter dirty money at smaller institutions, a regulator warned.

Nets has been a dominant payments technology player in the Nordic region for years, helping to drive the region's high proportion of mobile and digital transactions. Armed with fresh venture capital funding, Nets wants to expand its influence broadly across Europe.

As Nvoicepay expands, the payment automation company is keeping an eye on how it may fall under European data rules that have a knack for requiring compliance even from companies that should be exempt.

Wirecard is developing a fleet card platform enabling companies to control fuel and other vehicle expenses through an open-loop system with Visa payment cards.

Visa, which was criticized for its vague explanation of a June 1 outage in Europe, was in the process of installing better technology, but the project was not complete at the time of the incident and won't be finished until the end of this year.

Visa's management faces an unwelcome choice: It can share more information about internal shortcomings or mistakes that caused payments to shut off temporarily, or get summoned to Parliament for a politically-infused public questioning.

Merchants, banks, fintechs and card networks may crave digital payments' treasure trove of data over cash's simple anonymity, but any weakness in a centralized ecosystem threatens the entire network, as Visa learned late last week.

As more small to medium-sized businesses look to international e-commerce markets to boost sales, differences in tax laws can cause complications for sellers—and an opportunity for payment gateway companies offering workarounds.

Supermarkets and other retailers reported rejected transactions after a network glitch, causing some to quickly deploy cash-only checkouts.

Wirecard and Enio, an Austria-based supplier of electric car charging stations throughout Europe, are collaborating to enable contactless payments at thousands of sites.

YellowPepper's strategic investment from Visa as part of a $12.5 million Series D funding round gives the company a chance to expand beyond its focus on Latin America and into new markets such as Europe and Asia.

European payment gateway SIA has agreed to acquire First Data's card processing in a group of countries in Eastern Europe.

Development is happening in places besides London and Silicon Valley, and that will give payment companies and financial institutions a wider range of technology solutions and partners, according to Aidan Hayes, senior vice president of financial services and technology for Enterprise Ireland.

Businesses are already entering partnerships with some of the biggest players in the Chinese payments market, such as AliPay, and WeChat Pay, with the goal of offering tourists the ease of payments that they are accustomed to, writes Igal Rotem, CEO of Credorax.