Economy

Innovation requires the ability to tinker, test, break and repeat. Strategy and its close derivatives increase and delay the cost of failure. Business cases, focus groups, market analysis and roadshows, among other things, divert resources and defer action.

Starbucks, which handles more than 11% of its weekly transactions as payments from its mobile app, is planning to add several new features for iPhone owners.

The settlement of the Visa and MasterCard class action interchange swipe fee case has spawned a new type of company—the third-party claims filing company.

Beacons, or Bluetooth Low Energy transmitters, are seeing a burst in popularity as components of mobile payment systems. The devices, which can be roughly the size and shape of a nightlight, allow retailers to detect a mobile app user's presence in the store.

The Princeton, N.J.-based processor Heartland Payment Systems is moving its sales headquarters to a new building in Edmond, Okla.

Granted, journalists can be scavengers; they're nosey and can be positively annoying when they want information. But why does a whole group of crypto-anarchists and technologists think they have the moral high ground?

Knab, a branchless bank based in Amsterdam, is aiming to attract 250,000 customers by 2017 through the promise of smoother payments.

The online lender is about to surpass the $1 billion mark in loans and it just received another round of venture funding that will help keep the momentum going.

Global Payments Inc. has completed its $420 million purchase of Payment Processing Inc., a provider of payments technology and services for smaller merchants.

Ripple Labs, which facilitates payments in mainstream and virtual currencies, is creating a developer portal and supporting a new accelerator. Already its efforts have made it possible to connect the Ripple payment network to websites that run on Magento's e-commerce platform.

New Media Insight Group and Loop are promoting different types of mobile payment technology designed to avoid interoperability issues with current payment terminals.

Citadel EFT, a credit card processing firm, announced Tuesday that it is exploring ways to allow state-licensed marijuana businesses to accept electronic payments from their customers.

The Electronic Transactions Association is lobbying Congress to enact a uniform national data breach reporting standard that would replace a welter of contradictory state and local rules.

Salespeople in the acquiring business stay enthused about their profession through a variety of self-motivation techniques.

When Apple makes its long-awaited plunge into mobile payments, it is more likely to create a closed system for Apple customers than a truly open mobile wallet for all consumers, a new study from Celent says.

Payments innovation comes quickly, and often from outside the banking industry, leading Associated Bank to create a special procedure to monitor the tech market and customer preferences.

Jay Sidhu's Pennsylvania company is building a separately branded bank that, like Simple, will target a demographic that feels no particular affinity toward traditional banks.

Payments played a major role in the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Here are some of the biggest announcements that came out during the conference, and a few from just before or afterwards that were no less important to the mobile payments community.

Cellum, a mobile commerce provider, has integrated MasterCard's MasterPass digital wallet with its own mobile wallet offering, OTPay, making it the first third-party in Europe to integrate MasterPass.

Building simplified digital experiences, especially in financial services, is critical to institutional survival.