MBNA Ltd. is working with MasterCard Inc. to test the MasterPass digital wallet in the U.K., with plans for a possible launch in early 2015.

The field of P2P competitors has grown significantly since JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo founded clearXchange LLC in 2011, and the mega-banks' initiative still looks very much like it did three years ago.

The online art marketplace Etsy is steadily expanding its range of payment services, with its latest move taking aim at social media.

After spending 2014 digging out of fiscal slump, Verifone is setting up for an aggressive product rollout in the year ahead as it recovery shifts into high gear.

Initiatives such as Apple Pay and the upcoming CurrentC wallet are placing pressure on banks and retailers to accommodate the higher transaction speed, volume and performance expected on smartphones and tablets.

Stockpile, a company that provides digital gift cards for buying stock, has partnered with the financial technology vendor Yodlee to offer banks products aimed at encouraging consumers to save and invest.

The e-commerce provider Spindle has partnered with the payment processor TekTango to provide point of sale hardware with bundled payment processing services.

Many disruptive technologies come from startups, but just as many seem to come from companies that have been around for decades. Whether developing a new system in-house or providing a necessary proving ground for a partner, these older companies are bringing fresh innovations to the payments industry.

The global e-commerce payment gateway provider BlueSnap has developed new application programming interfaces (APIs) to help merchants increase sales as the holiday shopping season nears.

All over the world, consumption is undergoing a major shift. Consumers no longer need to choose between local specialty goods produced within their own communities or mass produced products manufactured abroad.

A new Bluetooth standard limits how beacons can track and deliver messages to people near stores, but this may not be a death knell to proximity-based payments and marketing.

Security vendor Retail Decision Plc (ReD) is working with First Data to deter card-not-present fraud in Mexico.

FitPay Inc., a wearable technology provider, is betting that the only way to change consumer behavior is to eliminate consumer behavior.

As card networks develop tokens to stand in for account numbers in online and mobile commerce, they may be able to standardize the experience across all companies that handle payments, said Mike Matan, head of global network business at American Express.

Rallying its members to wipe out passwords, the Faster IDentity Online Alliance — an organization of more than 150 payments and technology businesses — released standards Dec. 9 for multi-factor e-commerce authentication.

?Square Inc. has hired former Visa marketing executive Kevin Burke to lead its customer acquisition initiatives in retail, paid, Web and events marketing channels.??

Banks would have to upgrade their systems to accommodate faster transactions, and originating banks would pay the receiving financial institutions a fee to cover those costs, under a plan from Nacha, the industry group that sets ACH rules.

MasterCard is investing in and partnering with card technology company Dynamics to embed greater function into U.S. payment cards, a mission that has sputtered in past years.

The Aschheim, Germany-based payments company will process subscriptions for the TV station's Sky Starter and Sky Film packages.

Mobile payment share for Alipay, the payment affiliate of Alibaba, rose to 54% of payments in the first ten months of 2014 from 22% all last year.