Venmo

To pitch their payments system of the future, U.S. banks hired Daveed Diggs, an actor best known for playing Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette in the Broadway musical "Hamilton."

For financial institutions to match Venmo and Apple Cash's power, they need an embedded, mobile and social payment strategy, write Richard Crone and Heidi Liebenguth of Crone Consulting.

PayPal has been working to expand Venmo's audience beyond millennials for more than a year, a strategy that it hopes to further with instant transfers.

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

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.

Interac's e-transfer system has jumped in usage, and has become a gateway for myriad other services including a collaboration with MoneyGram.

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.

Apple Pay Cash is chasing peer transfer share in a maturing market, going up against long-established services like Venmo, Square Cash and the bank-powered Zelle.

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.

PayPal's latest move has been expanding its Venmo service beyond peer-to-peer payments to a method for paying merchants directly.