Technology

Groupon may not have its own mobile wallet, but it has a strong foundation to build on: The 110 million downloads of its daily-discount app, plus the merchants using its Breadcrumb mobile point of sale system.

Jacob Dienelt, a former financial adviser at Morgan Stanley, has joined Factom, a cryptocurrency tech startup, as its head treasurer.

Malicious software that blows past antivirus software undetected, combined with sophisticated social engineering (i.e. tricking employees of bank customers into divulging information), have enabled criminals to steal $500,000 to $1 million at a time, security experts say.

Merchants are making a new argument in their years-long battle with banks over swipe fees, saying Apple Pay has locked them out of additional routing options mandated by Dodd-Frank.

Recent cyber-attacks on the protocol that has long secured Web connections and, more recently, payment applications are pushing the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council to issue an update with strong implications for e-commerce sellers.

The payments environment is undergoing unprecedented change, yet many banks and payment companies are saddled with aging infrastructure which makes it costly to support new products and features. Additionally, fragmented governance and siloed business units running disparate payments operations can stifle innovation.

Rent payments are among the few lingering paper-based transactions, though a subset of the payments industry is shaking the trees to find ways to change that.

Europe is home to many innovative and disruptive banks, telcos and technology firms. Some of these are deploying mobile wallets that have the potential to span the entire continent.

Encryption still vastly outpaces tokenization as a means of defending data in the cloud, according to a new report from a cloud data cybersecurity firm, CipherCloud.

FICO and two data partners are testing a credit score based on alternative data that could help banks take smarter risks on borrowers with limited credit histories, but bankers' cost concerns and adherence to traditional methods present big hurdles.