Amazon

The two companies have worked together for 22 years, with the pending card designed to streamline experience to keep more B2B commerce in-house.

Microsoft is the latest to try to help a big retailer jettison cashiers — and the latest to discover how hard that is.

Going back to the debut of the free Square card reader, the mobile payments market has made fees — or the lack of fees — a major selling point.

A bill moving through the California Legislature seeks to tame the largely unregulated world of online small-business lending. If passed, it would be the first of its kind nationally, but so far it has failed to satisfy either the industry or its critics.

The deal could be harmful to their bottom line because it will provide Amazon with more visibility into an even wider percentage of their e-commerce data, writes Ralph Dangelmaier, CEO of BlueSnap.

Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google garner so much attention that they have their own collective shorthand, FAANG. But it was a mostly different set of companies, including Starbucks and Acorns, that were top of mind this week for their financial services moves.

The cashierless Amazon Go store is barely more than an experiment — it's live in only one location in Seattle, with plans for a handful of stores to follow this year — but it has already sparked a race to put similar models in place.

Banks will need to evolve further and faster to reach consumers in an interconnected, always online world, according to industry leaders.

Following the path paved by the checkout-free Amazon Go concept, the newly merged Albertsons and Rite Aid are developing their own technologies for faster and more efficient checkouts.

Bank of America says its artificial-intelligence assistant isn't likely to listen in on private conversations the way Amazon.com's Alexa did last month.

Retailers often try to counter Amazon's dominance by using the e-commerce giant's strengths against it, including its reliance on search engine optimization.

For voice to truly thrive in business and enterprise settings, the technology must handle complicated transactions, such as an order for multiple sets of tables and chairs with customized dimensions, writes Mark Bartlett, chief experience officer at FPX.

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.