French mobile payments app Lydia has raised €40 million (about $45 million) in a Series B fundraising round led by Tencent Holdings, owner of WeChat Pay.

Having grown up with smartphones in hand, these digital natives crave high speed and instant results, says Wirecard's Susanne Steidl.

Fearful of being the last one standing, banks and credit unions of all sizes will become more aggressive about real-time payments — or risk getting left in the past.

Mastercard is partnering with issuer processor EML and technology startup CleverCards to allow any business to send digital Mastercard payment cards directly to an employee’s or customer’s mobile wallet by SMS/text, email or any messaging app such as WhatsApp.

Before Visa agreed to acquire data company Plaid for $5.3 billion, Mastercard had been pulling ahead in the race among the card brands to break beyond reliance on basic processing fees.

Shopify has provided merchant cash advance services for the last three years for established online retailers, but newcomers with no transaction history typically were turned away.

Visa is ready to go all-in on Secure Remote Commerce, the technology behind the card brands' universal "click to pay" button, by starting to phase out the Visa Checkout brand for U.S. merchants on Jan. 21.

BBVA’s not sure if consumers or merchants will want to use an e-commerce marketplace to make bill payments in the same way they buy clothes — but if they do, BBVA wants to be the one to provide the necessary technology.

One banking-related highlight of the show was an announcement from HSBC and Google of a real-time conversation translator for Google’s nest hub.

In the battle to control consumer data, Visa has made a major score by agreeing to acquire Plaid, a technology company that it could have seen grow into a competitor.