PayPal

Fast growth in use of the bank's instance of the person-to-person payments product indicates it could one day rival Venmo.

Banks still have advantages in the battle against big tech firms like Amazon and Facebook, but they will need to capitalize on those to survive.

For payments to keep up, merchants need to focus on the shift to subscriptions and the true personalization of processing, writes Suneera Madhani, CEO and founder of Fattmerchant.

Some were sold at discounted prices, while others were shut down by their acquirers or quietly ceased doing business.

In a year of political upheaval and weak commercial credit growth, lenders sought to capitalize on an economic bright spot — consumer spending — by reviving the personal loan, allying with fintechs and exiting traditional business lines that no longer made sense.

Financial services organizations increasingly need an unwavering commitment to customer experience in order to compete, or the competitor down the street will do it first, writes Chris Millner, a principal of financial technology and a payments consultant at North Highland.

Some are in new roles or replacing legends, others are embracing new strategies or eyeing big deals and at least one is currently out of banking — but could soon resurface. Here are the industry executives to keep an eye on in 2018.

Payment Rails is putting a tight focus on the emerging area of “influencer marketing,” where global brands are spreading money among individuals who use social media to promote products.

PayPal wants to integrate TIO's bill payment customers into PayPal's network, but a data breach has that goal on hold.

Venmo achieved its status by designing its interface like that of a social network. PayPal's version of that comes from Facebook.

PayPal is following up on its P-to-P Facebook Messenger service by adding a chat extension that supports invoicing as part of a broader conversation about a sale.

Guidance focuses on five key traits, including overseeing risk profiles; a former Congressional aide says agency must be accountable.

PayPal is following its investment in micro-investing app with a direct link, vastly expanding the app's addressable market.

Some of the most successful recent innovations in payments started with peer-to-peer services before evolving into other products, writes Amitaabh Malhotra, chief marketing officer at Omnyway.

BigCommerce has added PayPal Credit as a payment option for merchants using its e-commerce platform.

Mnuchin’s former business associate is likely to be sworn in next week; Mulvaney, as a congressman, called the CFPB a “joke” and co-sponsored a bill to kill it.

The deal for PayPal’s consumer loan portfolio will make Synchrony a bigger player in e-commerce. And the agreement helps the Silicon Valley payments giant achieve its goal of reducing its exposure to the credit cycle.

PayPal has suspended the operations of TIO Networks, a bill-payment company it purchased earlier this year, following the discovery of security vulnerabilities that require investigation.

Customer service is steadily expanding within Facebook separate from its payments operations, as part of “an ecosystem for buying.”

PayPal is strengthening its services for e-commerce marketplaces and crowdfunding money-raising projects through PayPal for Marketplaces, while also adding Pay with Google for its Braintree merchants accepting Android Pay.