Digital wallets

Merchant holdouts are finally warming to the likes of Apple Pay, years after the mobile wallet's launch. Competitive offerings have also flourished from mobile operating systems and phone providers.

Apple Inc. is ramping up a test of a digital-first credit card with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. by expanding its use to tens of thousands of the iPhone maker’s U.S. retail employees.

Apple's App Store was a game changer for mobile payments. But Apple's ecosystem was also very much a digital Wild West, with app developers and Apple itself sometimes running afoul of regulators and legal authorities.

To fuel growth, Apple's mobile wallet needs to go beyond its core use cases of NFC and in-app payments. Apple Pay's latest project leans more heavily on NFC to do work typically handled by apps.

Paytronix has spent the last few years developing a streamlined enrollment process for restaurants’ loyalty programs, but it relies on something relatively few consumers use: Apple Pay and Google Pay at the point of sale.

The U.S. is already very late to the party when it comes to contactless payments. But even so, there are signs that many merchants still aren't prepared for an influx of contactless cards.

JCPenney ended support for Apple Pay in its stores and also removed the mobile payment option from its app, a surprising reversal for a brand that offered Apple Pay in 2015, within a year of its rollout. There are multiple factors in play here.

Almost conspicuous by its absence, Apple Pay is finally an option in the Uber Eats food delivery app — after five years of being a way to pay for Uber's separate ride-sharing service.

As if they needed another reminder that their business models might not have a place in the modern payments landscape, independent sales organizations are left wondering what role — if any — they will have in launching the Apple Card.

Samsung Electronics France is partnering with French card issuer Prepaid Financial Services to allow its line of PCS Mastercard prepaid cards to be loaded onto the Samsung Pay wallet.