Mobile payments

Zazu Limited, a Zambian fintech, has partnered with Mastercard to launch a mobile wallet that supports a prepaid account instantly issued from the app to any local consumer — with or without a bank account.

Up against the rising success of social payments providers like Venmo and Square Cash, banks are deploying more options to keep themselves at the focus of digital payments.

Lawmakers in Germany have passed a law that would require Apple to open the iPhone’s NFC chip to other mobile payment providers.

Ahead of the busiest shopping period of the year, CaixaBank is embracing facial recognition retail payments, an option that has met with pushback elsewhere.

Google doesn’t want to be a bank, but its move to offer checking accounts through Citi and a Silicon Valley credit union is a digital wallet architecture shift that will have far-reaching implications for technology-backed payment companies.

After weeks of enduring a firestorm of negative feedback regarding its proposal to launch the Libra cryptocurrency network, Facebook is turning to a more conventional system by joining other "Pays" in launching Facebook Pay.

From its start four years ago as a PayPal service, the Xoom mobile money transfer network has positioned itself as an international P2P app that could rival traditional networks through its speed and ease of use.

Singapore OCBC Bank will use Google Pay to support P2P transactions starting early in 2020, following a similar path as India, where banks have increasingly embraced Google Pay for transfers.

Earlier this decade, a boom in low-cost prepaid cards undercut the firm's business model. Now the fiercest competition is coming from venture capital-backed startups that offer accounts with no overdraft fees.

This summer, an international electronics company completed a $1.6 billion payment by mobile phone, the biggest transaction ever on the bank's CashPro app, according to Bank of America.