Cards

When you are a company that started out 125 years ago as National Cash Register, you've had to reinvent yourself a few times.

2014 was a big year for payments. Disruption came from within the financial services industry and from outsiders like Apple and Walmart. Mainstream payment companies had to respond to these new competitors as well as adapt to fresh attention from regulators and fraudsters.

A Canadian startup says it will enable customers to swap their holdings between gold bullion and bitcoins, and it plans an initial public offering next year.

In its first year of heavy involvement in testing and certifying payment security technology, scientists at Underwriters Laboratories have determined that tokenization should be a significant piece of a strong security "triangle."

The prepaid card and payments company Blackhawk Network is the new third-party gift card distributor for Hyatt Hotels and Resorts.

Green Dot Corp. will continue to sell its prepaid cards in Walmart stores, which are easily its largest distribution channel, through the end of 2015.

Moneris Solutions, Inc. and Syrasoft Self Storage Software will partner on two new integrated payment processing options for the self-storage industry.

PayPal has agreed to distribute CashStar digital gift cards through the eBay marketplace and the PayPal Digital Gifts store.

Card issuing and acquiring software provider OpenWay is partnering with People's Bank of Kazakhstan to deliver the first chip-based UnionPay cards in Central Asia.

MBNA Ltd. is working with MasterCard Inc. to test the MasterPass digital wallet in the U.K., with plans for a possible launch in early 2015.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has its sights set on prepaid and debit cards offered to college students as such products are filling the gaps left by credit card issuers which have largely left the space, according to a study released by the agency Dec. 15.

Stockpile, a company that provides digital gift cards for buying stock, has partnered with the financial technology vendor Yodlee to offer banks products aimed at encouraging consumers to save and invest.

The global ATM market will reach $21.9 billion by 2020, according to a new study by Allied Market Research.

Many disruptive technologies come from startups, but just as many seem to come from companies that have been around for decades. Whether developing a new system in-house or providing a necessary proving ground for a partner, these older companies are bringing fresh innovations to the payments industry.

In a breach incident that illustrates how long a company can do business without knowing fraudsters are potentially stealing its card data, Charge Anywhere LLC informed its merchants it has found and shut down malware that initially entered its network five years ago.

Worldpay, a payments processing and technology company based in London, plans to move its U.S. headquarters to Atlanta.

Blackhawk Network has reached an agreement with the U.S. Postal Service to distribute its closed-loop gift cards through post offices.

NCR Corp. has installed what it calls the first-ever automated teller machine in Somalia.

Data indicates that not only are more and more people acquiring credit cards from credit unions, but that the default and delinquency rates were lower for credit cards issued by credit unions than those offered by banks.

MasterCard is investing in and partnering with card technology company Dynamics to embed greater function into U.S. payment cards, a mission that has sputtered in past years.