Online payments

The use of one-time tokens has picked up steam in the past year, especially with merchant groups waiting for EMVCo to release specifications for a payment account reference.

Arkadi Kuhlmann, the founder and CEO of the neobank Zenbanx who pioneered branchless banking at ING Direct, explains why he stopped pursuing a bank charter and made a deal with Social Finance.

The acquisition should allow the San Francisco-based online lender SoFi to fulfill a long-standing goal: offering a deposit account to its young, upwardly mobile customers.

The bank's next big challenge is to find a place where the emerging technology best fits its needs.

Amazon.com Inc. and PayPal Holdings Inc. have discussed letting shoppers pay for Amazon purchases using their PayPal accounts, highlighting how PayPal can attract new partners since its 2015 split from Amazon rival EBay Inc.

As Facebook users increasingly deal with personal and payment data, the social media giant is turning to the Security Keys standard hosted through the Faster Identity Online Alliance for stronger authentication.

Since the dawn of online bill payment, billers and banks have been waging war to handle the payments on their own sites. At last, a victor may be emerging.

The method is still based on paper money, but the model includes steps that get consumers ready to adopt e-commerce. Given the region's smartphone penetration, that's an inevitability.

Boston-based Buildium, which provides a software platform for real estate property managers, has expanded its ePay online payment service to Canada, marking the first region outside the U.S. where Buildium supports electronic payments.

The breaches at large retailers and other companies are continuing, making it time to fully embrace a new authentication method.