Mobile payments

Executives from four companies—Worldnet co-founder John Clarke, Payrailz CEO Fran Duggan, CardFree CEO Jon Squire, and Sionic Mobile CEO Ron Herman— view Uber and Amazon as drivers of the shift to an "unattended" retail experience that removes human interaction from the process of making a payment.

By leveraging strategic partnerships and utilizing technology developed by the Pays and other innovators, banks can build a Siri-style experience, according to Stani Kulechov, the founder and CEO of ETHLend.

Fresh off the heels of having recently raised capital of more than $12 billion in its latest funding round before a potentially lucrative IPO, Ant Financial Group, the operator of Alipay, is rapidly expanding its acceptance network outside of China.

At this year’s Swift Business Forum in New York, executives said banks can build "more intelligent routing" to speed up payments and reduce the cost of processing and delivery.

Electronic payments processor Mobile Credit Payment has launched an app that allows small businesses to invoice customers through social media channels and accept various payment methods.

It all comes down to convenience. New payment apps, like Venmo, and widely adopted mobile wallets, such as Apple Pay and Alipay, have made the consumer payment experience incredibly convenient, writes Ralph Dangelmaier, CEO of BlueSnap.

Transactions are becoming just one part of an ecosystem that includes CRM and business management, according to Ryan Ahern, payments solution manager at Ingenico Group, North America.

Uber’s latest app update adds a stored-value account that incentivises riders to dive deeper into the Uber ecosystem — and away from their bank or mobile wallet provider.

Counter to the trend — pioneered by Amazon — of launching cashierless technology in small stores to keep traffic under control, the U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury’s has launched a trial of cashierless mobile shopping in one of its busy London stores, Clapham North Station Local.

By transforming a traditional treasury into a cashless economy, cities will open the doors to wider and faster adoption of more complex smart city innovations, writes Sumeet Puri, senior vice president and global head of systems engineering at Solace.