The seemingly positive embrace of contactless payments raises important questions about how we can safeguard access to cash, especially for the most vulnerable members of society, says Moorwand's Luc Geuriane.

Epic, the maker of Fortnite, is suing Apple and Google for forcing app makers to hand over a 30% cut of their revenue to the tech giants. The grievance against Apple is pretty clear-cut; the attack on Google is more nuanced, and could have major consequences for the payments industry.

The massive shift to digital has created new challenges in cross-border payment processing, says Tipalti's Manish Vrishaketu.

Appearing to support decentralized systems, the acting comptroller of the currency said on a podcast that "the ultimate public ownership of the payment rails is when you have a network, like the internet, of interconnected institutions and computers."

The rapid move online boosts false positives, false negatives and actual fraud, says Adara's Nguyen Nguyen.

The Philippines confirmed a former Asian executive of disgraced German payments firm Wirecard AG, who is part of an ongoing investigation, has died.

Major payment companies have long looked on at cryptocurrencies as too risky to touch, but too tempting to ignore. Mastercard's latest move indicates that the card brands are ready to make a firm pitch for crypto spending.

Paralysis between Republicans and Democrats hurts the people who would benefit the most from digital delivery of government stimulus funds, argues Polyient Labs' Jeff Hinkle.

The complexity of the migration is an opportunity to examine other elements of the payment experience, says TNS' Brian DuCharme.

Stripe is expanding its digital payment technology into new industries, and is also welcoming a series of notable executives with backgrounds that are mostly outside merchant technology. But they also have experience with much larger companies, a necessary skill as Stripe tries to grow out of its status as fintech upstart.