Technology

We all know bitcoin as an edgy and anonymous cryptocurrency. It provokes strong opinions. Department of Justice officials reference it in connection with real-life crimes, just as made-up bad guys reference it in movies.

As a supermarket chain with no supermarkets, FreshDirect has always been an early mover by design. That made Samsung's Internet-connected refrigerator a natural fit.

Walt Disney Co., having found success with its wearable MagicBand payment system, is retiring the paper "Disney Dollars" it has long accepted from parkgoers.

While Walmart's lawsuit against Visa this week centers on authorization and routing methods, the Debit Network Alliance LLC — a group of independent debit networks — is also taking issue with EMV routing in addressing how terminal software is handling the choices presented to consumers.

The payment giant's technology chief says he has an eye on bitcoin, the blockchain and the fintech competitors that have flooded the payments arena — and vows his company will consider partnering with some of them and can beat the rest.

Hackers believed to be working from China accessed the computer systems of top officials at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., according to a top House lawmaker investigating the incident.

The distributed ledger technology has an answer for updating every core function of the antiquated financial system.

When a breach of the world's major e-mail service providers was reported last week, it drove home the fact that a single stolen password can put numerous accounts in danger.

Small-scale financial services companies such as storefront lenders and local money transmitters which use technology should have a choice of whether they are regulated by a state or federal regime.

Unless the U.S. card business is able to offer merchants scaleable solutions that are cheaper and quicker to implement, there is a serious risk of full EMV migration taking several years to complete.