Mobile payments

The time has come for payment incumbents to increasingly depend on the cloud for more production applications and emerging technologies and choose platforms, partners and tools that will turn them into butterflies rather than fast caterpillars, writes Stephan Fabel, director of product at Canonical.

The subscription services industry is a booming market that has drawn-in hundreds of startups, millions of dollars in venture capital and changed many aspects of how people shop.

The CEO of the nation's biggest bank gave the fintech props for revolutionizing payments and then building off its success to provide a whole range of services to small-business clients.

Hong Kong's mobile wallet AlipayHK has expanded to enable cross-border payments for the first time in Japan and other regions of the Greater Bay Area.

Walmart India will partner with the PhonePe network to offer a mobile payment option at Walmart's B2B cash-and-carry stores.

China's rapid urbanization is causing a payments technology gap between the city and country, leading the government to issue a plan to bring digital payments in small towns and rural areas, a move that should also boost volume for Ant and Tencent's payments businesses.

Consumers are expressing an ever-increasing interest in making digital Person-to-Person payments to friends, families and even businesses for bills, shared expenses or temporary loans. Digital P2P payments are quickly beginning to displace other payment forms such as cash and checks due to their convenience and growing ubiquity.

Furniture retailers typically split payment for big-ticket items with a deposit and the balance due upon delivery, but the process is usually fraught with paperwork, security and efficiency gaps.

In the tug-of-war over merchants refusing either cash or cards embroiling local governments in New Jersey, New York City and Philadelphia, the Iowa State Fair is taking the middle ground. Beginning next year, all fair vendors will be required to accept cash, cards and contactless payments through First Data’s Clover devices.

Alipay is a force to be reckoned with outside of China, but it has taken a strategic approach to foreign markets that downplays its potential as a threat to local payment systems.