Thanks to Spiral Toys, now even your children's piggy bank has gone mobile.

Payment cards aren't dead, but they are buried under a growing pile of new and high-tech payment devices.

The explosion of mobile over the last few years has been staggering. By next year, the twenty billionth mobile phone will be sold. And not only are there many more mobile devices, we’re all becoming more reliant on them. In fact, 9 out of 10 consumers in the U.S. keep their phones within reach 24/7.

Though Apple Pay is advertised primarily as a high-tech way to make payments in stores, the Apple wallet's in-app purchase volume is a significant key to its growth.

Apple Pay is seeing a surge in U.S. bank support, with the number of participating banks rising past 900 with the recent addition of 60 regional and community banks, bringing it closer to full coverage in its home market. But Apple isn't having the same luck everywhere else.

Millions of consumers without traditional banking relationships can use Apple Pay, now that ADP, a major provider of payroll cards, has joined the mobile payments bandwagon.

NXT-ID and vacation and entertainment club memberships retailer WorldVentures have formed a strategic alliance.

To facilitate its push into the U.S. market, Splitit (formerly PayItSimple) recently added its cloud-based interest-free installment payment technology as a free plugin for e-commerce merchants using the WooCommerce platform.

Person-to-person payments are a sudden hotbed of innovation. Many banks and technology companies are rethinking their approach to P2P and finding ways to offer the service in a way that is genuinely appealing to the mobile generation.

The research says it over and over: Banks should move quickly to adopt or develop new payments technology, but it leaves banks with a very long 'to do' list.

Mobile technology companies love baking purchase capabilities into websites and mobile apps, providing myriad choices that make securing merchant buy-in the next big play. But there is a question of whether the rapid growth of in-app purchase may be "too much."

Technology and applications platform Envestnet | Yodlee has partnered with white-label app provider Magpie on a full-service platform.

Ingo Money in Atlanta, Ga., has added former MasterCard president and chief executive H. Eugene Lockhart to its board of directors.

With emerging payments technology, it's important for legacy companies cover as many bases as possible. For MasterCard, this means putting its technology into everything from jewelry to home appliances to a reimagined take on the classic plastic payment card.

New patents provide a glimpse into how Apple Inc. plans to personalize the payments experience by harnessing Apple’s iMessage channel, bringing it in line with message-based P2P services from Venmo, Facebook, Google and others.

MasterCard is unveiling an app that takes the Internet of Things to its logical extreme, stopping only one step short of becoming Star Trek's instant food replicator.

Transportation is one of the most obvious venues for mobile transactions, though it can also be one of the most difficult, given the legacy infrastructure and the vast scale of most systems.

Payments technology provider Elavon says it is among the first payment processing companies to offer Apple Pay to Canadian businesses.

From fairly humble beginnings three years ago with the low-fee Bluebird prepaid Amex card and the Serve platform, Walmart has gotten more and more aggressive — and welcoming — with payments innovation.

Bitcoin Direct has a heavyweight behind its latest digital wallet – literally.