Mobile payments

Shell has launched a new mobile app called Pay & Save, designed as a frictionless complement to the EMV-chip cards it must accept at its pumps by late 2020.

Cross-border e-commerce is seeing explosive growth, driving a race among payment providers and acquirers to equip online sellers with the technology to accept any kind of payment in virtually any region. Credit and debit cards are the dominant payment type North American merchants accept, but are much less common elsewhere.

Visa showcased payment technologies it’s developing for future Olympic games, including in-home “couch commerce” leveraging augmented reality.

The payment landscape is still very fragmented with local solutions holding their own against global giants and new technologies such as AI and blockchain keeping the payments market very enterprising, writes Eva Murphy Ryan, trade development executive for financial services and technology at Enterprise Ireland New York.

At Tropical Smoothie, a new IT project will deploy new cloud-hosted point of sale terminals, handheld devices and kitchen display systems over the next few weeks across its 700-location footprint.

Comparing the U.K. payments landscape to that of the U.S. is sometimes like comparing apples to oranges according to Ankit Kumar, manager of digital payments and mobile financial services at Gemalto.

PayPal launched a new merchant app called PayPal for Business, aimed at driving usage and adoption of its invoicing and payments services among freelance workers and small businesses in India.

Banks and merchants are rapidly deploying chatbots for answering basic account questions, shopping and accessing the internet of things. But new data suggests consumers don’t fully trust chatbots yet with payment account details and personal information. Here’s a look at what consumers think of chatbots and why it matters.

Payments will melt into the wider commerce experience and create new incremental value for consumers, according to Brendan Miller, a principal analyst at Forrester.

For merchants to reap the full benefits of the modern mobile payments ecosystem, their payments strategy can go beyond accepting a contactless tap-and-go card and encourage use of smartphone payments at the point of sale, writes Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association.