Mobile payments company Yapital has partnered with the German supermarket chain Wasgau to support smartphone payments with minimal technology upgrades.

Monitise has picked up some well-heeled backers to fuel its move into global markets, as MasterCard, Telefonica and Santander join to take a stake in the mobile technology company.

Real-time payment systems must be interoperable if they are to succeed, Fiserv says. To this end, the vendor wants to enable an open network, but it faces stiff competition.

The annual Cyber Monday shopping holiday is a boon to mobile payments, but remains a significant challenge for e-commerce security.

Apple Pay launched in late October, facing a few early hiccups and an unclear future. But in the month of November, Apple's strategy began to come into focus even as competitors closed in.

A year after the Target data breach prompted retailers to step up their migration to EMV-chip acceptance, many consumers finally have EMV cards or can access the same security through Apple Pay's new mobile wallet. But will they finally change their habits?

A U.K. company is building a mobile payment system that is designed to appeal to the needs of both banks and retailers, but faces challenges in winning consumers away from mobile wallets that have already hit the market.

Twitter Inc. is testing a way for users to redeem discounts through merchants' tweets, expanding its online commerce efforts.

Slyce, a two-year-old company that allows consumers to take pictures of items to make purchases, has launched a "visual shopping app" called Pounce.

American Express' recent moves show it wants to score more points with its Serve digital wallet platform and become a software provider alongside its place as a card network.

Dekkers Davidson, CEO of the Merchant Customer Exchange, wants to create the same type of disruption in mobile payments as Uber did in the taxi world.

In a sign of the success PayPal has had in marketing its digital wallet, slightly more than half of consumers surveyed said they would choose PayPal over the other mobile payment options available for holiday shopping in stores.

Xoom Corp., a digital payments company based in San Francisco, has launched a mobile bill-pay service in Latin America.

BlueSnap says its partnership with First Data Corp. will result in fewer declined transactions for e-commerce merchants, thus convincing more of them to turn to the online gateway provider to support global sales.

Toronto's new express train will provide a mobile ticketing option, though whether that technology can transfer to the rest of the city's transit system remains to be seen.

Most small merchants are not security experts, but the past year's string of retailer breaches may slowly be changing their mindset.

Square CEO Jack Dorsey told CNN that his company wants to help businesses accept all payment forms, including Apple Pay.

Payments processor Calpian reports growing adoption of its mobile money services in India.

Cardpool is partnering with SCVNGR's LevelUp to give consumers an alternative way to spend unwanted gift cards.

Many companies have found it difficult to build consumer interest in using a dedicated app for payments, particularly for person-to-person payments. Some companies have determined that the best way to keep users engaged is to blend payment capabilities with social networking.