Amazon

It's vital to be in touch with consumer shopping and payment tastes for individual retail categories and consumer groups. That may or may not include removing cash and human interaction, according to Andrew Wind, principal product manager at Worldpay.

As alternative apps and fintechs make progress on mobile payments and digital finance, banks will need to turn to third parties and partnerships to stay relevant, writes Paul Wilmore, chief marketing officer of Barclays U.S. consumer business.

For Whole Foods, the potential to tap into the sheer volume of new customers via the Amazon Prime premium loyalty program is unprecedented, writes Tom Caporaso, CEO of Clarus Commerce.

Prime customers, who pay an annual fee for benefits such as free two-day shipping and access to Amazon’s video and music library, will now also get discounts at the upscale, organic supermarket that Amazon bought last year.

The deal, Walmart’s biggest ever, gives it greater access to India’s e-commerce market, which Morgan Stanley has estimated will grow to $200 billion in about a decade. But it will take some time for the business to turn profitable.

Only through data can issuers create a superior digital customer experience and provide strategic guidance to help on-the-go customers, writes Lisa Woodley, vice president of FSI customer experience for NTT Data Services.

Amazon and Walmart are battling to build an e-commerce presence in India, making Flipkart a key target for an aquisition.

Visa and Mastercard's "single button" for online payments seems like it would most directly threaten PayPal, but the card networks' campaign puts just as much pressure on Amazon's omnichannel push.

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.

Amazon is offering to pass its discount along to at least some smaller merchants if they agree to embrace its Amazon Pay service.