The payments industry is getting pulled in two directions, as technology and e-commerce promise a borderless future for transactions while political forces apply the brakes.

The debit card is growing in popularity in the U.S. for retail transactions, and consequently FIs are making debit a top priority. However, the strength of debit is a double-edged sword.

Banks of all sizes continue to invest in mobile technology — but in order to see stronger growth, they must also invest in education to overcome consumer unease with the product.

For payments to keep up, merchants need to focus on the shift to subscriptions and the true personalization of processing, writes Suneera Madhani, CEO and founder of Fattmerchant.

Fevo partners with ticketing websites such as Ticketmaster, Tickets.com and Axs.com, using its software to power a "go with friends" button to the ticketing sites.

Commercial customers, including small businesses, seem ready to pay up to shift to faster, more sophisticated electronic invoicing and payments, and enterprising banks that provide them the technology to do so could find it lucrative.

After a year of trying to appease U.S. regulators, Ant Financial and MoneyGram have terminated their merger agreement, challenging the Chinese company's strategy for global expansion.

Compliance checks today are not continuous or automatic, even in the largest of global enterprises. Traditionally, compliance audits are performed by organizations just once a year when, in reality, they need to be continuous in order to be effective, writes Manoj Asnani, lead of product and design for Balbix.

While interest from the West has so far been tepid in the region, this is an opportune time for fintech investors to look at participation in the Southeast Asian market, writes Alexander Koles, CEO and founder of Evolve Capital Partners.

People are spending more time in messaging applications, and merchants need to be visible in that venue, writes David Nunn, head of Braintree Europe.

With so much uncertainty, the only thing that's clear is how different the sector may look a year from now. Here's an overview of the leading trends in technology that will impact payments and banking in 2018.

As bitcoin's market swings steal the headlines, there are some people in the cryptocurrency industry who are trying to push the market back toward its original intent as a decentralized means of payment.

China's central bank has put the brakes on mobile and e-commerce payment schemes in the past, mostly from the standpoint of having a wary eye on third-party players elbowing their way into financial services.

With so much uncertainty, the only thing that's clear is how different the sector may look a year from now. Here's an overview of the leading trends in technology that will impact banking in 2018.

Here we take a data-driven journey into 2018 and some of the key trends that we’re likely to witness.

China's Ant Financial Group, the company behind Alipay, was among eight companies that EMV standards governing body EMVCo has named as technical associates to its secure-payment consortium.

For all of the noise in the payments industry around transitioning to real-time and same-day digital payments — and in the mainstream media around the bitcoin craze — paper checks still persist as the preferred means of disbursement for the majority of business-to-business transactions.

With the increased demand for heightened security and the increased costs, there will also be a growth in attacks from nation-state actors, writes Antwayne Ford, president and CEO of Enlightened.

Major retailers accept bitcoin, and BitPay reports that it will process more than $1 billion in payments this year. Even McDonald's is reportedly considering that it will accept bitcoin payments, writes consultant Collin Canright.

Mobile wallets have always been a hard sell. In many countries, credit and debit cards work well enough that consumers don't want to learn a new way to pay. But banks and technology companies are committed to bringing their wallet apps to market. In an effort to stay competitive, these companies have spent considerable effort to get their wallets to stand out not only against competitors, but against the compelling option to keep using cash and cards.