The 2012 Jobs Act let regular Americans invest in startups, spawning a glut of crowdfunding sites offering real ownership stakes in return for cash, rather than the new smartwatches or electric skateboards available on pioneering platform Kickstarter.

Artificial intelligence is steadily making its way through the payments and financial services world. The technology's usefulness for fraud detection is clear, but there are other areas where AI can have an impact.

Germany's Wirecard is expanding again through the acquisition of MyGate Communications, a small but fast-growing payment services provider based in Cape Town, South Africa.

Visa, Global Payments Inc., Samsung and Arval will help the bank operate Spain's first Payment Innovation Hub in Barcelona.

WeChat, China’s most popular social media and messaging service, has launched a new bid in Europe and the U.S. to develop its payments offering and win new advertisers.

Consumers are increasingly positive about loyalty programs, mobile ads, chatbots and making a purchase from a smartphone, despite an early resistance to changing their payment habits when mobile wallets debuted years ago.

The next phase of India’s national digital payments initiative begins next month when 20 banks launch Aadhaar Pay, an app enabling merchants to accept payments on smartphones from consumers using biometric authentication.

Siam Commercial Bank Pcl, Thailand’s oldest homegrown lender, plans to reinvent its mobile digital payment platform as a lifestyle app to help fend off competition from upstart financial technology providers.

Machine learning, Siri and Alexa are taking off quickly, particularly among younger consumers. Banks and payment companies need to get in the game now.

U.S. restaurants' EMV migration has lagged behind other retail categories for several reasons, including the hassles of replacing centralized payment systems with pay-at-the-table routines that chip cards often require. But another reason: Restaurateurs have other priorities.

Swedish startup Truecaller has become the newest entrant in India’s busy digital payments space, via a tie-up with ICICI Bank Ltd. to offer a local mobile-payments service.

Amazon.com Inc. has agreed to buy Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com, betting that e-commerce in the Middle East is poised to take off.

With AmazonFresh Pickup, a brick-and-mortar extension of its grocery delivery services, Amazon is edging further into the crowded grocery market with a model that downplays the process of wandering the aisles of a physical store. But unlike some of Amazon's other retail efforts, this one is not as big a departure as it first seems.

Passwords are often restrictive, undynanmic and draw attention from fraudsters. And there's also the risk of repeated cybercrime linked to old authentication.

The business-to-business payments market is one of the laggards in transaction automation, and a reason often given is the lack of customization options. Businesses are using consumer-style technology for business purposes, and the fit isn't right.

Given the pressures of cart abandonment and showrooming brought about by digital marketplaces, traditional retailers are trying lots of ways to fight back with digital techniques of their own.

It's difficult for acquirers to have the proper payments technology available when merchant interest peaks. This is even more difficult as efforts such as Smart Cities and Internet of Things initiatives overwhelm retailers with options.

As trends in payments technology take hold or taper off, it's safe to say that one is firmly entrenched: The shift to mobile and integrated point of sale devices.

As multi-factor identification becomes the norm, biometrics can be one or more steps that consumers can easily execute.

Germany's state-owned development bank KfW, which gained publicity for erroneously transferring hundreds of millions of euros to Lehman Brothers the day the U.S. firm filed for bankruptcy, has done it again.