Economy

Chirpify founder and CEO Chris Teso's five o'clock shadow and plaid shirt identify him as one of the new breed of payments entrepreneurs. His advice to newcomers: be fearless.

ISOs and agents can lose established clients and miss out on new business if they fail to offer a full complement of loans and merchant cash advances, a vendor warns.

As more payments companies seek the next big thing, they are finding that mobile payments tech is due for a makeover, and a lot more attention surrounds digital currency such as Bitcoin.

Optimize Capital Markets has created a portal to automate capitalization deals of $2 million to $20 million. But along the way, it has found investors are not willing to part with their money in a completely automated way.

As a new year dawns, ISOs and agents are still wondering whether to regard the industry's new entrants and offerings as competitors, potential allies or a little of both.

The payments industry is full of big ideas that haven't always found the right audience. As we enter 2014, a few trends are bringing new relevance to some older technologies.

TipperCoin is attempting to combine two concepts that have faced strong headwinds in the past year: digital currency and Twitter-based payments.

Banks need startups to test the waters with new products and services, but startups need banks for their capital, infrastructure, large customer bases, established regulatory relationships and compliance training.

In the past few years, the payments industry has experienced a flood of new offerings, from consumer-facing giants like PayPal and Google to Silicon Valley startups such as Square.

Bitcoin may get the most attention, but several merchants are beginning to accept a digital currency called Litecoin, the second largest digital currency by market capitalization.

One thing appears unlikely to change for ISOs in the year ahead: the rapid rate of change itself. Innovation, competition, disruption and adaptation will continue to characterize the industry

"Operation Choke Point," the federal government's campaign against online payday lenders and collections agencies, is unjustly attacking third-party payment processors, an association official says.

As more mobile wallets experiment with alternatives to Near Field Communication, Isis stuck to its use of the contactless payment technology. But will that prove to be a winning strategy or just a payments-industry fad?

By analyzing behavior such as cell phone records, two startups have found a way to help those without bank accounts to obtain credit.

The Walt Disney Co.'s board of directors has elected Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey as an independent director.

Square, Google, PayPal and many other mobile payment providers overhauled their technology in 2013. Here's a look at how things changed, on the surface and underneath.

Small Business Payments Company seeks to partner with banks to provide better online tools to small business owners, an area that's been ripe for disruption for years. The product forecasts companies' cash flow, which gives rise to more cross-sale opportunities for banks.

The Bitcoin community has long dealt with wild fluctuations in the digital currency's value, and as the digital currency has surged to several hundred dollars per bitcoin, more consumers and merchants are adopting the digital currency.

As more consumers pile into Bitcoin and the currency's market capitalization increases, any handful of trades will not have as strong an effect on the currency’s price swings.

La Caixa Bank says it will soon launch the largest mobile payment venture in Europe, once again placing the bank at the center of a major European payments initiative.