As Apple Pay creates more consumer and merchant awareness of mobile payments, Benefit Mobile Inc. figures the time is right to focus on enabling charitable donations from smartphones.

Business-to-business payments are ripe for disruption and there are plenty of startups innovating in the space today. These newcomers, after being thwarted by corporate red tape, are finding a more welcoming audience from small businesses.

Mobile tech providers are racing to incorporate EMV chip-and-PIN or chip-and-signature security into their offerings. But many of these companies are taking fundamentally different approaches to linking EMV and mobile technology.

The co-founders of Mopay have officially joined the executive team of Boku, which acquired the German company last month.

New Zealand-based financial services institution Westpac has contracted Gemalto, a Dutch digital security company, to provide its mobile payment technology to Westpac's customers.

Google Inc., citing a maturing e-commerce market, is telling merchants it will end support for its digital goods application programming interface. As such, they need to find another processor soon.

Co-branding credit card partnerships has never been smooth sailing, but competition has clearly gotten tougher amid Apple Pay's launch.

Banks and merchants are under threat to lose millions of dollars in investment in their apps by allowing them to become obsolete because they don’t provide the most desired functionality of all: Payment.

In what amounts to eliminating password use and evolving the Verified by Visa and SecureCode online authentication processes, MasterCard says a new security protocol it is developing with Visa could be implemented next year.

For payment technology developers, the stakes couldn't be higher as the FCC develops new rules that could support or eliminate net neutrality, a system in which Web access is equal for most users, regardless of size.

Allied Payment Network, an online payments company in Fort Wayne, Ind., released a new platform for small-businesses payments.

Alibaba's cooperation with Apple may start with offering Apple Pay in the Chinese market through an intermediary to skirt regulatory hurdles, Alibaba Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai told a Chinese-language news wire.

Xapo, a bitcoin startup headed by financial services entrepreneur Wences Casares, is launching its wallet app on iOS, a move that shows the company has turned some attention to ease of use.

Uber, the ubiquitous black-car company that popularized the use of mobile apps to book rides, will switch to a two-tiered payment system to continue operations in India.

Check, a mobile payments and financial management provider owned by Intuit, has completed updates to two of its mobile apps.

Square Inc. may have more incentive than other acquirers in urging merchant clients to accept EMV-chip cards, but its pricing strategy could deter some from adopting the secure technology.

Space Coast Credit Union will work with ACI Worldwide, an electronic payment and banking service provider headquartered in Naples, Fla., for its online and mobile banking as well as electronic payments.

Alibaba needs help to build a market in the West and is openly courting cooperation with Apple and PayPal, suggesting sweeping e-commerce alliances and even acquisitions may soon follow.

There is lots of talk about mobile payments and where banks play, but the real opportunity has less to do with payments and more to do with “mobile commerce services," or all of those things banks (and merchants) can do via mobile to attract, engage, motivate and reinforce customer relationships to protect existing revenue streams and create new ones.

MasterCard has emphasized prepaid cards to replace cash as a first step to extend financial services to the underbanked, and is adding mobile technology to add more services to its financial inclusion initiative.