Mobile payments

One of the earliest bitcoin companies, Circle has attracted several rounds of investments and is beginning to diversify its strategic focus.

The collaboration gives Apple Pay an entry into the freelance payment market, an industry that's growing fast but underserved.

The company hopes to build off of its successful mobile app by adding new ordering technology. A massive international expansion of its store footprint is also in the works.

In short order, Mastercard, Visa and now Amex have made rapid strikes designed to not only bolster identity protection for online commerce, but to make that protection nearly invisible to the consumer.

Amazon’s latest attempt to disrupt retail—a store that automatically handles the whole checkout and payment process via an app—is a concept that could have far-reaching effects as the millennial generation brings its digital expectations into the brick-and-mortar world.

A Johannesburg startup is set to become the first company ever to manufacture smartphones in Africa, taking advantage of low costs and growing local demand to build handsets, tablets and other devices based on Google Inc.’s Android system.

The U.S. may never face the type of crisis sparked in India through a government decision to recall high-currency bills to curb fraud. But the countries and their financial institutions have something in common — they welcome any technology that introduces digital money in lieu of cash.

As Starbucks prepares to transition its top executives into new roles, it helps to look back on its history in mobile payments and examine how its management structure helped this plan. Here are a few of the key decisions the company made.

Investors initially jeered Howard Schultz's decision to step down as Starbucks' CEO, though the famed mobile strategy that's helped spur the coffee chain's high performance over the past couple of years doesn't necessarily require the company's founder to be in its biggest office.

American Express has added a new mobile payment service to the growing list of "Pays" available to consumers in Canada.