Mobile payments

Airlines are a paradox of mobile payment acceptance. They handle check-ins, boarding passes and other key functions through their apps, but are not as full-featured when it comes to handling sales over phones and tablets.

To help people keep their card information safe when they shop online, a handful of fintech startups are following Apple Pay's example of keeping that information hidden, providing merchants with tokens instead.

Payment technologies are in an unwelcome spotlight this month, as security researchers expose their weaknesses just as the products are winning a long-desired trust among mainstream consumers.

In a reversal of its longstanding aversion to Apple Pay, Walmart has acquired a company that not only accepts Apple Pay, but gives customers an incentive of 1.5% off the purchase to use a debit card loaded into Apple's mobile pay system.

A coalition of Canada’s largest vending machine operators has formed a partnership with Portland, Ore.-based payments technology startup PayRange Inc. to add mobile payments through Bluetooth technology.

Merchants using BlueSnap payments technology to power e-commerce and mobile checkout will have Visa Checkout as a payment option for customers.

Turning banks into app stores has primarily been a vision of some European startups, but a California company is hoping to bring it to reality in the United States.

The Kerv contactless payments ring, a Kickstarter-backed project that reached its funding goal in October 2015, has begun production.

The U.S. is steadily building the foundation of a nationwide faster payments system, but not all of the pieces are connected. Many of the elements developed independently, with influence from across the globe.

Payments technology is rapidly changing, but so is the broader environment for retailers, creating a need for flexible and diverse payment acceptance options.

The nomadic nature of renters creates a lot of friction for companies that match apartment-seekers with available housing. But a California startup says it's beating that problem with a payments solution that asks neither renters nor landlords to change their habits.

Cash has been notoriously stubborn in light of the relentless onslaught of new payment methods, and though it has started a very slow decline, it is perhaps decades away from declaring defeat.

The tough move from free to fee for its readers has Square adjusting its strategy to lure merchants, but it also opens the door wider to new markets, according to CEO Jack Dorsey.

Samsung’s newest handset enables users to authenticate mobile payments by gazing at the screen, in the latest expansion of biometric security for smartphones.

While Early Warning is continuing to recruit banks to participate in its risk management engine and clearXchange P-to-P network, it's also working with nonbanks to quickly expand its footprint.

As digital wallet strategies begin to fall into place for more large banks, many smaller banks are feeling the pressure to develop apps of their own.

Barclays threw out security questions for telephone banking access this week and began using voice recognition technology, representing a step in an industry-wide move to eliminate passwords and challenge questions.

Prague-based CSOB has launched the first mobile wallet for Near Field Communication-based mobile payments in the Czech Republic—already a bastion of contactless payments—with plans for e-commerce payments down the road.

Wells Fargo's embrace of Near Field Communication technology is rapidly approaching at least one milestone — a customer experience that does not require a card to use an ATM or pay in a store.

Swedish mobile payments company Seamless has steadily diversified the range of contactless payment technologies it supports in the hopes that it will be able to provide an entry-level platform for any financial institution's mobile wallet strategy.