Disruptors

BIPS’ strategy: Make it easy for merchants to get started with Bitcoin, aggregate their balances with the company, and make money over time on foreign exchange conversion and premium services.

Apple's Passbook has no payment function of its own — it is a blank canvas for other developers to add their ideas. In this way, Apple's featureless mobile wallet is fast becoming one of the most full-featured options available today.

Online and mobile payment tech startup Stripe has expansion plans on both sides of the Atlantic, and will rely on being a "simple" play for payments startups as it faces crowded field of competitors.

BitPay, which processes payments in the decentralized digital currency Bitcoin, has integrated its platform with Amazon's fulfillment service, which ships goods for merchants that store their merchandise in Amazon's warehouses.

Many merchants still don't take credit or debit cards, usually because of the cost. Two-year-old Plastiq aims to help these holdouts by shifting the cost of card acceptance to the consumer.

Bitcoinstore, an online seller of computers, monitors, cameras and other electronics, opened for business recently with the promise of undercutting competitors who accept only conventional payments.

Affirm, the new mobile payments company that counts PayPal co-founder Max Levchin among its own founders, is already drawing buzz—and some head-scratching over certain aspects of its business model.

Consumers are notoriously reluctant to choose new payment habits. This week, LevelUp and 20 retailers forced the issue by taking away their choice. The "credit card diet," which took place Feb. 26, involved 20 retailers in Boston and Washington D.C. They all refused credit cards for one day.

In the future, wearable computing — such as Google's recently hyped Glass — could be a boon for programmers looking to create financial services software for banks.

While the banking industry was recovering from a global financial crisis and reacting to the prospects of new regulations, smart entrepreneurs were finding new and better solutions to people's problems.

The new app gives users access to a Green Dot savings or checking account on their iPhone or Android, with fees optional.

It's not enough to be multichannel anymore, says author and Movenbank founder Brett King. Banks need to help people bank within the context of their lives.

Ripple, the latest project of serial disruptor Chris Larsen, aims to be a flexible technology for handling digital payments in any imaginable currency, from bucks to bitcoins to bicycle parts.

Technologists are obsessed with it. Banks have invested in it. And unlike most mobile payments products, customers are actually using it. With Square, the Twitter co-founder is on the leading edge — again.

To some, Elizabeth Warren's concept of a consumer protection regulator is an innovation. To others, it's an abomination. Either way, it's here to stay, and banking regulation will never be the same.