Calculating the average U.S. phone bill to be around $80 a month, San Francisco-based Digit has established a way for consumers to more easily set aside money for that expense.

In a move to increase the security of card transactions, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is requiring all advanced features such as contactless to be turned off for new and re-issued cards until the user opts-in.

Even in mature markets, consumers may not feel very connected to their payment cards. This is making issuers more reliant on selling data-driven experiences over simple transaction processing.

Buyers are researching payment options, and choosing suppliers accordingly, says MSTS' Brandon Spear.

Marqeta has been certified as a European card processor with Mastercard to help digital banks issue cards more quickly, signing Twisto as the first customer of the collaboration.

The future of brick and mortar retail is somewhere in the swamps of Jersey. Buried beneath a virtual sea in a place once called Xanadu is an underwater version of New York, a nautical Times Square where marquees scream “Piranha of the Opera,” and “Krill Grill.”

Providing simple and rapid claims payouts is a competitive feature in the property and casualty insurance industry. Both Visa and Mastercard see insurance payouts as a use case for their respective card-to-card transfer services, Visa Direct and Mastercard Send.

By experimenting with palm-print hand wave transactions, Amazon is putting its resources behind another work-in-progress technology that traditional retailers will almost certainly have to invest in just to keep pace.

The local payments acceptance technology of cross-border fintech dLocal is now available for Amazon users in Chile.

Ebanx isn't new to the payments technology game in Latin America, having focused on cross-border e-commerce technology a few years ago to allow consumers in that region to make purchases from international merchants.

Moynihan says the bank’s consumer market share could be doubled; retail terminals would connect customer’s hand print with their card information.

Last week, Indian regulators ordered an antitrust probe of Walmart and Amazon while Jeff Bezos and other Amazon execs traveled to New Delhi to tout a $1 billion investment to digitize local businesses. The message is U.S. investment is welcome, as long as U.S.-driven data mining is kept at bay.

U.K. digital payments provider and challenger bank Revolut is closing soon on its latest fundraising round with investors, including Technology Crossover Ventures, providing a $7 billion to $8 billion valuation for the startup.

While not as large as the U.S. both in number of people and number of credit card owners, the U.K. remains a very lucrative market for issuing banks and card networks, as well as a host of alternative financial service providers catering to younger, underserved consumers.

Terrorism financing schemes using cryptocurrencies are growing in sophistication, according to researcher Chainalysis Inc., which helps law enforcement track digital-coin transactions.

Small and midsize businesses often struggle to manage their cash, requiring new means to move funds, said Finsync's Eddie Davis.

The move to dump passwords in favor of more flexible authentication will likely happen in clusters, with schools providing many of the factors necessary.

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.