Disruptors

EBay and its payments subsidiary PayPal are aggressively mining consumers' spending data, which they say is vital as shopping expands across mobile, online and physical shopping channels.

Nine Italian banks will begin a nationwide rollout of MyBank, an electronic payment system that allows bank customers in the Single Euro Payment Zone to make e-commerce purchases through online banking.

Microsoft Corp. has made several efforts to build new technology for payments, and its mixed successes provide insight into what consumers are willing to tolerate at the point of sale.

If biometrics is ever going to be a part of how consumers make payments, PayTango Inc. figures the best place to find out is on college campuses.

The United Kingdom’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) has accredited Payleven, a mobile payments acceptance company, as a payments institution. Payleven is also now part of MasterCard’s mPOS program.

Chris Larsen has spent several decades in the financial services industry, playing a key leadership role at disruptive companies E-Loan and Prosper, where he had to navigate a tricky and fast-evolving regulatory obstacle course. He will likely draw upon these skills again in his latest role as CEO of OpenCoin.

Plastiq's service asks consumers to pick up the cost of card acceptance. It presents a service fee that is added to the transaction amount, much like sales tax is typically added at the point of sale.

Israeli startup MyCheck is launching its mobile payment app in New York City at the end of April, expanding its model of allowing consumers to pay tabs with a smartphone instead of waiting for servers to bring the check.

For the two-year-old LevelUp, the national expansion of a pilot the mobile-payment provider ran with the 16-year-old processor Heartland Payment Systems is nothing short of a godsend.

Bitcoin payment processor BitPay Inc. today announced its global processing volume for the month of March will exceed $2 million, a milestone for the company. BitPay is also reducing its fees.

Startup CommonBond crowdsources funds from alumni members and interested investors to establish a loan pool for student lending.

When remittance company Xoom decided to not withdraw money from its customers' bank accounts until the funds reach the recipient, it was betting the added goodwill from users would outweigh the added risk of fraud.

Virtual currencies have finally garnered enough of a following to make the U.S. government react. Bitcoin's a big focus, but even companies like Facebook and Amazon.com may have to take FinCEN's new rules into account.

It’s been a busy month for mobile and online payment technology provider Stripe, which took another step in its expansion plans by partnering with mobile application developer Parse.

Pencils and paper aren't normally associated with digital payments innovation—yet those tools may inspire a big project with FreedomPay and Barclays.

MasterCard plans to charge a digital-wallet fee to third-party payment providers as part of a new registration process, a move Visa's CEO called "totally appropriate" — but Discover says it is on a different path.

One of the first successful adopters of in-store mobile payments and digital rewards, Starbucks plans to launch new initiatives that will expand the company’s loyalty and payment programs across channels.

Heartland Payment Systems and SCVNGR's LevelUp are taking their merchant services and payments bundle, which they earlier tested in a handful of cities, nationwide.

Facebook's social network has been as hostile as Twitter's for payments companies seeking to tap into the site's millions of users. But American Express and Chirpify separately sensed an opportunity worth pursuing.

Leaf, a company that offers a payments-specific tablet, is opening to more processors in an effort to lure merchants away from Square and other point of sale acceptance companies.