Mobile payments

In a push to get commuters in Athens, Greece away from paying cash for public transit tickets, the mobile ticketing provider Masabi will add MasterCard's MasterPass as a payment option.

Western Union has begun offering a service that allows U.S. residents to send money to Mexican bank accounts.

The holding company for 15 banks, which is approaching $20 billion in assets, has been testing cardless ATM transactions since the summer of 2013. Now, it is expanding the capability to dozens of machines — marking it the first institution in the U.S. to take the technology, powered by the vendor FIS, into production.

Government officials in Gujarat will partner with MasterCard to pursue a goal of being the first state in India to have a digital payments system.

While many agree that usernames and passwords should give way to more advanced identity management, progress toward this goal has been extremely slow.

The telco-led mobile wallet venture Softcard has laid off 60 employees and is consolidating its offices, a sign that the company's staffing may have been oversized compared to its opportunities in the market.

The San Jose-based payment terminal maker Verifone launched a new mobile operating system and is separately working with Samsung on new mobile point of sale projects.

Global payment solutions provider Elavon has partnered with Verizon to bring mobile point of sale products to Verizon's small-business customers.

Tritium Partners has acquired a majority stake in Giact Systems LLC, an electric payments service.

The extended leave of Starbucks' chief operating officer, Troy Alstead, could indicate that last year's creation of the COO post has succeeded in furthering the coffee chain's mobile payments initiatives.

Apple Pay will expand to Canada this year, according to a report by 9to5Mac, a news site that follows Apple's activities.

Nine Polish banks are pushing ahead with the country's mobile payment efforts, promising to launch a Visa-backed, cloud-based contactless service early this year.

One of the clearest things that sets Apple Pay apart from other mobile wallets is its incorporation of Touch ID fingerprint recognition. Now that Apple has opened up Touch ID to outside developers, the fingerprint tech is spreading throughout — and in some cases beyond — Apple's ecosystem.

Starbucks Corp. Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead will go on an extended unpaid hiatus, leaving the world’s largest coffee-shop chain without a No. 2 to Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz.

PayPal's mobile payments application can now be accessed by BlackBerry users in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, with plans for more markets later on.

Wirecard, a digital payments company based in Germany, has partnered with Five by Five, a software provider in Croatia, to provide mobile point of sale technology to small businesses.

A Helsinki, Finland-based startup is hoping to knock down one of the barriers to credit-card acceptance in developing countries: a lack of reliable Internet access.

Biometric security has become a hot topic in the payments industry with many experts lauding its convenience and effectiveness. But there's no consensus on whether to store biometric data locally or in the cloud.

Apple's reputation as a negotiator is rather simple—it doesn't negotiate. But Strategic Resource Management, a negotiation company with 200 clients in financial services, contends issuers and merchants have a chance to win more favorable terms with Apple.

High-tech cards have struggled to gain traction as a distinct, offline — and often expensive — consumer gadget for storing and protecting multiple payment accounts. But the pervasiveness of Internet access points and Internet-connected devices could give some of these gadgets fresh appeal.