Mobile payments

Going back to the debut of the free Square card reader, the mobile payments market has made fees — or the lack of fees — a major selling point.

Brick-and-mortar stores are rapidly adding self-checkout options usually linked to proprietary mobile apps, giving merchants more control over how payment options are presented.

The world’s most profitable car manufacturer is investing $1 billion in Singapore’s Grab Holdings Inc., valuing Southeast Asia’s largest car-hailing service at just over $10 billion.

MyBucks plans to give away entry-level smartphones, loaded with the company's financial technology, to encourage mobile payments, mobile banking and broader access to digital services in Africa, where financial innovation often moves quickly.

Merchants are interested in new payments technology, but there's still an understanding gap that keeps cash a viable option.

New Jersey’s commuter rail and bus system is joining the movement to add contactless payment options for commuters, which observers say could spark broader adoption of mobile payments across the U.S.

Mastercard's Cardless ATM service, developed with Diebold Nixdorf, resembles the technology many banks have adopted in the last few years — but Mastercard's offering sheds the limitation of being tied to a specific bank's ATMs.

Payroll needs can be tricky — especially on the open seas, where cruise staffers often have to go through several expensive steps to cash out their paychecks.

The cashierless Amazon Go store is barely more than an experiment — it's live in only one location in Seattle, with plans for a handful of stores to follow this year — but it has already sparked a race to put similar models in place.

Redwood CU's home-grown pay-by-text solution won a prestigious award recently, but the credit union is already looking at ways to build even more functionality into it.