Mergers and acquisitions among payments companies rose 44% in 2014 compared to the year before.

As he assumes the role of CEO of 'buy local' offers company Buzz Points, Dwayne Spradlin predicts that certain trends in technology and consumer habits will breathe life into a loyalty model that has stagnated in the past.

2014 ended roughly for some of the biggest payment companies, and 2015 will bring even more challenges from rapidly changing technology and nimble startups.

Across the world, startups are using digital delivery to challenge companies like Western Union and MoneyGram, a battle that in recent months has become increasingly heated.

One of the most challenging IT issues is proving ROI, establishing that a specific technology rollout had a measurable impact on business goals. But Tesco is making a powerful case for proving the ROI of 3-D technology its apparel e-commerce business used to achieve a 24% plunge in online returns.

Online money transfer service WorldRemit has signed a partnership with a telco that serves Africa, Asia and the Middle East to enable its customers to send money to mobile wallet users in those regions.

Ingenico Group, a French maker of payment terminals, has completed its acquisition of Roam.

Digital payments company ACI Worldwide has begun offering bill pay services on ATMs and kiosks sold by LD Systems.

Western Union has expanded its retail presence in Europe through a partnership with the international remittance service UAE Exchange.

Even though Apple Pay hasn't yet launched in the U.K., experts in the EMV-compliant nation are eager to bring over Apple's mobile wallet to improve card-not-present security.

Turning off your phone before you go into church is probably a good idea — unless you plan to make a donation.

While real-time payment technology is a hot topic among banks in the U.S., real-time data analysis is likely to come much faster.

One of the engines driving Kenya's mobile-money transformation is poised for export.

Tesco has begun testing a system that lets Google Glass owners fill a shopping cart without setting foot in the store, but this test may have a limited audience, as it launched just days before Google stopped selling its high-end headset.

Google wants to buy the telco-led mobile payments consortium Softcard, according to the technology news site TechCrunch, which cited unnamed sources.

The upcoming Apple Watch, which does not have a built-in fingerprint reader for Touch ID authentication, will use a four-digit passcode to engage Apple Pay for mobile payments.

The ATM is one of the oldest self-service technologies in banking, and mobile is one of the newest. But surprisingly, this odd couple of technologies has a lot of synergy.

Merchant acquirers can learn a lot from their new competitors about how to stand out in a crowd where everybody appears to be the same.

Mobile payments provider Spindle signed an agreement with Transaction Data USA, a payments industry consulting firm, to expand the sale of its products to merchants.

Retailers are adopting many innovations to counter the lure of online shopping, which is becoming more of a threat to brick-and-mortar stores as e-commerce spreads to a growing number of Internet-connected devices.