The volume of payment apps is reaching critical mass. From retailers to coffee shops to airlines, companies across virtually every industry have developed a mobile app to make the payments experience simpler and faster for their customers – and to gather more data on who they are and how they spend their money.

Diebold and Wincor Nixdorf — which plan to merge under the name "Diebold Nixdorf" — were already in the midst of major projects to digitize bank branches and retail stores before the pressure from mobile devices led them to join forces to keep pace with innovation.

Chase Visa cards are now compatible with Samsung Pay, the smartphone maker's mobile payment system that combines magnetic secure transmission and Near Field Communication.

Small business professionals using the New Zealand cloud accounting software Xero can be alerted on their finances through Apple Watch.

Mobeewave combined two Canadian staples — hockey and contactless payments — to test a technology that allows smartphones to pay 'each other,' and is now taking the concept on the road to other markets.

As shopping gets more digital, so does fraud. The rise in technology at shoppers' fingertips provides many new channels for scammers to exploit.

Black Friday will mark a new milestone this year, when mobile devices for the first time will account for about half of all online purchases during the first weekend of the holiday shopping frenzy, according to a new study.

There's no shortage of upstarts trying to cut cost, time and risk out of global money transfers. To maintain its position, Western Union is investing in the technologies it finds the most promising while keeping others at arm's length.

The market for international e-commerce in China is growing much faster, and working much more smoothly, than attempts by Western companies to launch within the country.

Apple Pay has gone Down Under, reaching its fourth country since its 2014 launch in the U.S.

Dunkin' Donuts, in a bid to catch up to the technology prowess of Starbucks Corp., is testing on-the-go ordering and delivery service in some U.S. markets.

Despite many merchants' resistance to the EMV migration in the U.S., the chip-card technology can become more appetizing when it is baked into another item on the terminal maker's menu.

Mobile ticketing for mass transit has a rare quality in mobile payments — it addresses a pain point that consumers actually long to have solved.

Apple Pay has come to its third market, Canada, following a 2014 debut in the U.S. and a mid-2015 expansion to the U.K.

Icahn Associates Corp., the fund run by billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn, sold its remaining eBay Inc. stake at the same time as it reported a 3.8 percent holding in the Internet auction company’s spun off payments unit PayPal Holdings Inc.

After years of supporting payments research and building a reputation of being friendly toward technology startups, American Express is bringing its key technologies under the Amex Enabled Digital Solutions umbrella.

First Data and NCR Corp. are flexing their scale muscles in an agreement that brings the technology strength of both companies to the grocery, petroleum and convenience store industries and expands NCR's ATM footprint.

Pilots have to pay for gas and let air traffic controllers know when they need it, but a mobile payment app can help them do that while eliminating paperwork and managing other tasks common with flying corporate, private or charter planes.

A few months after introducing its mobile wallet in the U.S., BBVA is attempting to lure adoption through 'instant' cash-back credit card rewards for qualified transactions at checkout.

At a time when the financial services industry is moving toward faster payments, a handful of entrepreneurs are looking to narrow the gap between an honest day's work and an honest day's pay.