Technology

The two-year old APASS has helped Alibaba persuade wealthier consumers to up their spending at Tmall and Taobao shopping emporiums.

The app is based on a Masabi’s ticketing platform used by agencies and operators such as London’s Thames Clippers, Preston Bus, New Orleans’ RTA, Boston’s MBTA, Transport for Athens, Los Angeles’ Metrolink and New York’s MTA.

Banks should focus on strategies to ensure their sales incentives programs actually help drive profits. Otherwise, their rewards programs are at risk of adding zero benefit to their bottom line.

Banks are warming to behavioral biometric software as one of an array of choices to prevent digital banking fraud.

While around 70% of U.S. merchant locations still aren’t ready to handle EMV card transactions, Atlanta-based merchant acquirer Elavon, a unit of U.S. Bank, can tell the opposite story: 70% of its merchant clients will be EMV-enabled by the end of this year.

Forget about municipal governments. Through transactions such as payments, banks have a trove of data that can be used to revolutionize how cities work.

Mastercard will launch its “selfie pay” system in the Asia-Pacific region next year, expanding the global reach of its biometric identity-verification service for online payments to more markets as part of a gradual worldwide rollout.

Typically merchants post signs at EMV terminals to tell their customers how they work, or that they should keep swiping. Starbucks is taking a more forward-thinking approach by treating EMV frustration as a mobile marketing opportunity.

Behavioral biometrics has already stopped several million dollars worth of online banking fraud at National Westminster Bank in London.

India's abrupt recall of its larger bills — a bid to crack down on tax evasion — was a crash course in how to adapt to a cash shortage. Was this an opportunity for mobile payments or a failing of the overall financial services system?