Mobile wallets

Everything's in place for mobile payments to supplant plastic cards in the U.S. — except for a compelling reason for the transition.

Google can’t underestimate the importance of its maiden voyage with Google Wallet and the lessons the company learned in being one of the first to offer payments through cellphones in the U.S.

The retailer-driven Merchant Customer Exchange initiative to create a common mobile wallet had good intentions, but it overlooked the nature of retail itself — that each company has to differentiate itself to lure customers.

The U.S. may be next to see a surge of contactless credit cards, following other major markets around the world. But it’s unclear whether enough U.S. consumers are interested in contactless payments for issuers to make the investment.

Each of these wallets has developed its own personality — and, presumably, its own must-have feature to pull consumers and merchants away from the competition.

Consumers' growing dependence on smartphones makes it all the more crucial to be prepared to do business where your members are.

AWS's recent tech summit, with strobe lights and throbbing sound system may have felt more like a music festival than a conference, but one thing was clear: the symbiotic relationship between the online juggernaut and financial services runs deep.

Dynamics has been in the high-tech payment card game long enough to see its market disrupted by two major shifts: the U.S. EMV migration and the launch of Apple Pay. Going forward, the company may find that the best way to deal with a fickle U.S. audience is to focus its attention elsewhere.

Companies of all sizes have attempted to serve kids and teens with prepaid cards or digital wallets with parental controls, but there are very few success stories. GoSave's twist is that it doesn't make a card or an app the focus of its experience.

In the era of digital and mobile payments, many banks and tech companies have strived to completely do away with cash, checks and cards. But quite a few have had to concede that the market isn't quite ready to give up the physical trappings of payments.