Disruptors

The timing brings Samsung's mobile wallet to market just a few weeks shy of Apple Pay's one-year anniversary — and in line with the expected annual refresh of Apple's iPhone line.

Visa's newly established Bangalore-based technology development center is rebuilding Visa's presence in India, bringing fresh ideas to some older projects.

In the heavily competitive mobile payments market, the fastest way to lose is to pin all hopes on one vendor. Rite Aid learned this lesson the hard way as a participant in the Merchant Customer Exchange, a multi-retailer mobile payments initiative that demanded exclusivity from its partners.

Eris Exchange, an over-the-counter futures market based in Chicago, is trying to stop Eris Industries, a London tech startup, from using the name Eris in markets where both companies operate.

The first version of the Samsung mobile wallet is nothing like the Samsung Pay that is now making its way to handsets. But the one consistent theme in Samsung's strategy is to be the first to experiment with new technologies.

Many payment companies are hosting hackathons to attract developer talent from outside their own ranks; MasterCard found that its own people are just as eager to bring their ideas to life.

Apple Pay users are fanatically satisfied — to the tune of 98% of in-store users and 93% of in-app users surveyed — making an average of 2.6 weekly in-store purchases and 2.3 weekly in-app purchases, according to the Auriemma Consulting Group.

Visa is partnering with and investing in Stripe, fueling the processing startup's international ambitions and product development while giving the card network added juice to build new technology.

Starbucks and American Express are both using cross-merchant rewards to boost their own volume, but with a very different philosophy driving each company's program.

PayPal's gotten off to a rousing start as an independent company, but Visa CEO Charlie Scharf doesn't appear to be worried.

Starbucks now handles nearly nine million mobile transactions each week in its U.S. stores, representing 20% of sales and more than double the figure it reported two years ago.

Payments technology is advancing so quickly on so many fronts that Spindle CEO Bill Clark is changing his requirements for hiring new sales staff.

Toronto's mass transit system is embarking on a mobile ticketing initiative that the system's operators hope will become the dominant payment system within three years — a time frame that demonstrates how hard it is to migrate to new payment technology.

Independent sales organizations are facing an age-old question that has confronted teenagers for centuries: What are they going to do with their future?

Major tech companies are building payment capabilities into their mobile apps, social networks and other offerings. These projects coincide with a rise in mobile commerce, potentially creating a new standard for how consumers shop.

Google is firming up plans for a feature that allows consumers to buy products directly from a retailer's ad on a mobile phone, part of a Silicon Valley-driven trend that would place card issuers at a disadvantage.

Finding Apple Pay-accepting merchants in the U.K. isn't quite the needle-in-the-haystack proposition that it is in the U.S., but it's still enough of a challenge to raise concerns among Apple's partners during the mobile wallet's launch in the country.

Banking experts are starting to look into cryptocurrency tech, and they are hedging their bets by finding uses for both the public blockchain models – like Bitcoin – and private models.

Zapp is racking up bank and merchant participants for its mobile payment venture in the U.K., filling the gap left by the telco-led Weve initiative and providing scale as Apple Pay launches.

The PayPal of today has come a long way from the 1998 startup that enabled people to transfer funds between Palm Pilots. As the company nears its spinoff from eBay, it is continuing its acquisitive streak with some transformative purchases.