Mobile payments

The ride-hailing giant is the largest retailer to accept Venmo payments to date, and the move is an indication of how the platform plans to make money.

The graveyard of defunct all-in-one startups includes companies like Coin, Swyp, Stratos and Plastc. But whenever one of these companies failed, its technology simply moved on to a new owner.

Since Amazon Go's announcement, there has been a rush to duplicate the company's cashierless store concept without the same level of tech investment. The latest competitors are focused on the cameras that identify items as consumers take them off of the shelves.

Entrust Datacard, which serves both sides of the physical and digital payments spectrum, sees the categories' fates as intertwined. The more momentum digital and mobile wallets have, the more opportunity they create for their plastic counterparts.

Ethiopian Airlines and CellPoint Mobile have partnered in providing its travelers with alternative payment technology.

Nets has been a dominant payments technology player in the Nordic region for years, helping to drive the region's high proportion of mobile and digital transactions. Armed with fresh venture capital funding, Nets wants to expand its influence broadly across Europe.

Alipay is deepening its reach to Chinese consumers in the U.S. through a partnership with 99 Ranch Market, a 50-store chain of supermarkets specializing in Asian products and food.

U.S. Bank is firmly committed to voice assistant technology, but remains cautious about enabling all forms of money movement via verbal commands.

Businesses are accustomed to on-demand processes and easy digital transactions in the consumer app economy, and now expect the same experience in their business supply chains, according to Jamshed Khan, tech chief at LeaseQ.

When it comes to the pizza industry, online and mobile ordering has generally been the province of chains like Domino’s, Pizza Hut and California Pizza Kitchen. But smaller shops are looking to get a slice of this market.

Despite a reputation for being the go-to P2P app of digital natives, Venmo is once again pushing its market in the opposite direction with the debut of a plastic card.

From its origins as the fuel card operator Wright Express that launched 35 years ago, the fleet card provider WEX has aggressively expanded to other corporate sectors including travel and health care. But fleet cards still inspire some of the company’s most interesting innovations.

Called Mezu, the P2P platform has been live for about a week and uses a location-based code to execute payments, avoiding the need to even share usernames or other identifying information to move money.

Mobile and digital technology are expanding use cases for reloadable prepaid cards beyond their heritage as a tool primarily for the unbanked consumers. Furthermore, mobile commerce is driving broader acceptance of digital versions of both prepaid and retail gift cards.

Payment processors have increasingly become full-service providers from equipment to security measures and, most recently, some mobile and omnichannel options.

Scan-and-go payments and other mobile technology can redirect store resources toward more personal service to keep consumers in stores, according to Julian Wallis, retail director at Rambus.

Longtime Starbucks boss Howard Schultz was so invested in the company's mobile payments strategy that he once stepped down from his day-to-day duties to focus his full attention on the tech initiative. Without his involvement, will Starbucks lose its edge in fintech?

As contactless cards continue their momentum in the U.K., new use cases are popping up for the tap-and-go technology.

As competition from the bank-powered Zelle mounts, the popular social P2P app Venmo is phasing out support for online payments in favor of its mobile app.

Microsoft is the latest to try to help a big retailer jettison cashiers — and the latest to discover how hard that is.