Disruptors

Visa has accumulated a 9.99% stake in Square, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, giving a boost to the mobile point of sale company, which has faced challenges recently.

Much of the growth in wearable technology is happening without an eye to enabling payments. This is prompting many companies to find a way to add payment capabilities to wearables without forcing users to buy an entirely new device.

Silicon Valley companies like Marqeta, Stripe and Braintree cut their teeth on the open network concept, creating a place for themselves at the table of future embedded payments, instant card issuing or instant credit.

The honorees, selected by the editors of PaymentsSource, are responsible for businesses and innovations as diverse as the payments industry itself.

There have never been so many foundational changes at once in this industry, Murray said. It’s imperative that everyone in it stay on their toes and be “prepared to change direction at any moment.”

A consortium of Swiss banks hope the country's reputation for banking, technology and smartphones will give its financial institutions a commanding position for in-store and in-app payments.

Rather than partner with a startup, 45-year-old Equitable Bank in Canada created a separate brand, EQ Bank, to acquire customers who are ready for an account without a debit card.

For the first time in its nearly 60-year history, Visa is inviting third-party software developers onto its network with the goal of advancing digital commerce.

The Canadian bank's U.S. wealth management arm is moving toward a hybrid digital-human advice platform, partnering with BlackRock's FutureAdvisor to add robo tools for its 1,900 advisers.

Blockstream, a tech startup that employs several core developers of the bitcoin protocol, has raised $55 million in venture capital to develop its sidechain technology and expand its global operations.

Media properties and financial services rarely go hand in hand, but in Canada one partnership is testing whether today's millennials will be more open to that kind of pairing.

On the surface, traditional bankers and third-party disruptors may not always have the same approaches in mind, but the gap between their goals and how to go about it is increasingly getting smaller.

The rush to be a "one stop shop" for merchants by bundling mobile, Web and in-store payment technology is prompting many companies to join forces, resulting in several high-priced mergers and acquisitions in recent years.

The rush to be a "one stop" for merchants by bundling mobile, Web and in-store payment technology is proving to be a heavy lift, in terms of cash, resources and IT skills.

There have been many reports of bitcoin's demise, but the fate of one currency doesn't eliminate the many use cases that virtual currency could still address in payments, according to Evan Duffield, a Phoenix-based developer and founder of the virtual currency Dash.

Telcos, banks and technology companies have all taken their shots at mobile wallets, but as mobile commerce matures, the niche players are reaping the biggest rewards, according to Remitly CEO Matt Oppenheimer.

Digital Asset Holdings, the blockchain technology startup led by Wall Street veteran Blythe Masters, has raised more than $50 million in funding and expanded its board, the company said Thursday.

It may seem odd for a vendor of payment acceptance hardware to discredit EMV security, which is commonly seen as a catalyst for hardware sales, but that's exactly what MagTek is doing.

Banks operating on legacy systems created 30 to 40 years ago are becoming far more open to working with third-party innovators, which have no interest in the baggage that would accompany becoming a direct competitor to the banks themselves.

Prediction markets are the opposite of "yes men" — they're designed to induce experts to show what they really think. Could large banks, among the most siloed, opaque and politicized organizations around, use internal prediction markets to learn hard truths?