Mobile payments

PayPal has long desired to be a force in brick-and-mortar payments, a strategy that's more vital than ever as the newly independent company pursues a course that distances it from its former owner, eBay.

Apple Pay was supposed to be the catalyst that finally convinced banks, merchants and consumers to leave their wallets at home and start paying with their phones. But a year later, it seems mobile wallets still need One More Thing to get off the ground.

With more smartphones coming equipped with technology that can read each user's fingerprint, it might be time to expand this idea and check the fingerprints of the device itself — particularly as mobile and e-commerce see more fraud as a consequence of EMV tightening up security at the point of sale.

PayPal Holdings Inc.'s third-quarter sales missed estimates in its first report since the company's July separation from eBay Inc., revealing a rocky start to its first few months as a stand-alone company.

Apple Pay will launch in Canada later this year with American Express — and no other issuers named for the mobile wallet's launch in the region.

Consumers still aren't eager to make payments from their phones, despite the immense security boost mobile wallets provide through encryption, tokenization, dynamic account data and biometrics. So MasterCard is taking these technologies and hiding them in other products.

JPMorgan Chase entered the digital wallet wars in announcing Chase Pay, a product that will launch next year. Although mobile payments have been more bark than bite so far, the company says that its product plans to use loyalty programs to lure reluctant consumers.

The alliance between JPMorgan Chase and the Merchant Customer Exchange represents more than an olive branch between two industries that have typically been at war over fee revenue — it's a result of a years-long transformation in how Chase approaches its relationships with the retail sector.

New mobile wallets like the Merchant Customer Exchange's CurrentC may find themselves in conflict with other high-tech mobile apps that came to market sooner.

Microsoft Corp. has never been a dominant name in mobile payments, but it has dabbled enough in the process to draw interest around the payment potential of its Windows operating system.