The deal will help First Data compete in the fast-growing "integrated payments" space as payment processors race to diversify products, markets and technology.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have grown rapidly in the past year, prompting more mainstream acceptance.

Voice-based payments are part of the "instant gratification" consumers will expect from payment and financial services companies, writes Hicham Tahiri, a Paris-based fintech entrepreneur.

Mobile wallets have always had a chicken-and-egg problem: Why should merchants accept them if consumers don't use them, and why should consumers use them if merchants don't accept them? To solve this problem, it takes a village.

Installment payments for e-commerce purchases are starting to take hold in North America as an alternative to standard credit cards, and PayBright is seeking a niche in Canada.

Digital payment brands like Venmo are achieving scale quickly by recognizing that no one wakes up thinking they need to make a transaction. They really focus more on what they have to pay for, according to CO-OP Financial Services' Shazia Manus.

The Federal Reserve Board's vice chair of supervision said that digital currencies hold the potential for innovation but that the financial system's security and resiliency are more important.

Even though they do not face the immediate prospect of regulation requiring an open-banking policy, American banks should act as if they do.

Venmo achieved its status by designing its interface like that of a social network. PayPal's version of that comes from Facebook.

Neither the acquirer processing the payment, nor relevant regulatory bodies ever know that these payments are actually for illicit goods, making transaction laundering particularly dangerous and far-reaching, writes Ron Teicher, CEO of EverCompliant.

With the holiday shopping season, there is an inevitable dark side — an increase in transactions means an increase in fraud. This is to some extent the cost of doing business; fraud will always be a percentage of overall transaction volume.

As any stressed-out parent knows, kids can be quite bad at communicating what they need for school. Bursari has added a software development kit to improve its ability to accept and process one-time and recurring payments to schools through a variety of means.

With the wide-scale adoption of mobile phones, and the use of NFC and QR codes for payments, the card brands most likely see a threat to their business model and, in a defensive move against potential disruptors, are wisely embracing the spirit of mobile, writes Jeremy Gumbley, CTO at Creditcall.

Paytm Payments Bank is targeting to become the world’s largest digital bank with 500 million bank accounts and aims to turn into an integrated financial services company that offers everything from wealth management to share trading.

The right platform can detect unusual behaviors and block fraudulent transactions as they occur, while still allowing real customers to make legitimate transactions without interruptions, writes Dave Excell, CTO and co-founder of Featurespace.

Black Friday is making headway with bargain-hunting U.K. consumers, but their 3 billion pounds ($4 billion) in spending is doing nothing to help Britain’s troubled retail centers.

Caixa Bank and its partners in Spain's first cross-industry collaboration to advance payments technology have officially launched their research lab in Barcelona.

Fitbit's expertise in monitoring exercise and health seems pretty far removed from the world of payments, but the company is running full-speed into the world of fintech.

Antiquated testing strategies result in code being deployed with a variety of vulnerabilities and bugs, which is especially dangerous given the current payment landscape of expanding endpoints, consumer devices and payment apps, writes Mark Medlin, chief technology officer of Paragon Application Systems.

Transit agencies worldwide are attempting to eradicate cash and the bottlenecks that it causes from situations where customer throughput is paramount. But is this effort truly viable given the entrenched payment behaviors and requirements for serving everyone, even digital naysayers?