Technology

Starbucks Corp. Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead will go on an extended unpaid hiatus, leaving the world’s largest coffee-shop chain without a No. 2 to Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz.

Lenda, a new mortgage company backed by Silicon Valley investors, wants to supplant the traditional loan officer with consumer self-service technology.

The earliest implementations of the 3D Secure e-commerce system amounted to a password for consumers' payment cards and a link between consumer and card issuer — an idea that is growing stale in a world where consumers are able to authenticate payments with more sophisticated tech.

PayPal's mobile payments application can now be accessed by BlackBerry users in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, with plans for more markets later on.

Skrill, an e-commerce provider based in New York, plans to offer its digital wallet as a payment option in Second Life, the once-popular virtual world game that was released in 2003.

Wirecard, a digital payments company based in Germany, has partnered with Five by Five, a software provider in Croatia, to provide mobile point of sale technology to small businesses.

A Helsinki, Finland-based startup is hoping to knock down one of the barriers to credit-card acceptance in developing countries: a lack of reliable Internet access.

Biometric security has become a hot topic in the payments industry with many experts lauding its convenience and effectiveness. But there's no consensus on whether to store biometric data locally or in the cloud.

After National Credit Union Administration Chairman Debbie Matz revealed the agency is mulling new encryption standards, a trade association says the regulator should focus on its own steps to "better protect" member "data in its care."

Apple's reputation as a negotiator is rather simple—it doesn't negotiate. But Strategic Resource Management, a negotiation company with 200 clients in financial services, contends issuers and merchants have a chance to win more favorable terms with Apple.