Disruptors

Santander Group, the Spanish banking giant, has invested several million dollars in Ripple, one of the most prominent startups in the hotly discussed field of distributed-ledger technology.

Apple Pay has been out for a year, so many of its partners have had time to reflect on the various issues it has faced since launch. Bank and credit union executives shared their experiences at SourceMedia's 2015 PayThink event at the end of September.

As Uber-like business models perpetuate, bringing more contractors into a world where their job functions are handled primarily through a mobile app, there are still some pain points for which plastic is well suited.

A recap of the informed opinions (and the discussions they generated) on BankThink this week, including how postal banking could help low-income people in the U.S. and the continuing debate over interchange fees.

Competition is heating up among mobile wallet makers, but not everyone is racing toward the same goal. Many are starting to look past Near Field Communication-based contactless payments, championing newer technologies as well as reviving older business models.

Once placed inside of payment cards, computer chips can catalyze uses well beyond merchant security, argues MasterCard's Carlos Cornejo, who adds the card network plans to expand card utility through the mix of chips and tablets.

CommonBond has expanded its student loan refinancing program to more than 2,000 universities at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Retailers beware: Starbucks is changing consumers' expectations in mobile payments yet again.

Among other reasons for seeking their own charters, the U.K.'s so-called challenger banks say they need to avoid being beholden to older institutions that can slow down the creative process.

Visa has created a prototype of a car designed to initiate payments, the first step in a five-year plan of changing the way motorists pay for gas and other needs while in transit.

Blockchain technology associated with Bitcoin has caught the eye of bankers, but now comes the hard part: figuring out where it can be used — international payments, treasury services or elsewhere — without wasting a lot of time and money in experimentation.

Arthur Levitt, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993 to 2001, will become an adviser to the marketplace lender Social Finance.

Orchard Platform, which provides services to institutional investors in the marketplace lending industry, has raised $30 million in additional funding.

Graduate business students — some of whom previously worked at traditional financial services companies — have been organizing fintech clubs at universities to explore the dramatic changes in banking and to find potential employers.

The smartphone can add significant security to payments, but it is also a tool that fraudsters can exploit. Researchers and scammers have already found several unique attacks that rely on mobile devices.

The "buy buttons" that are popping up on social media platforms are intentionally simple, often meant to enable one-click purchases of individual products. But as the technology's popularity grows, so must its capabilities.

Dylan Richard was the lead engineer for President Obama's reelection campaign, where the use of unstructured "social data" forever changed how presidential win the support of their constituents. Four years later, he's one of PayPal's newest recruits.

More financial services companies are landing on MaRS, a corner of Toronto where developers are building new uses for smartphones, wearables and alternative currencies all under the same roof.

The growing adoption of Apple Pay will help Apple's smartwatch capture up to 68 percent of the smartwatch market by the end of the year.

The mobile wallet market is constantly changing, often in unexpected ways. Products have evolved dramatically in a very short amount of time, and companies that seemed committed to one strategy a year ago now find themselves on a completely different path.