Online payments

BillHero, a bank-agnostic bill pay app, now lets users pay their bills through a Facebook Messenger chat bot.

Amazon's Prime Day event is marketed as a summertime version of the Black Friday shopping holiday, but it also serves as a proving ground for the retailer's most experimental ways of selling its products.

Despite the many big companies opening their programming tools to external developers and merchants, the market for user-friendly technology is just getting started.

E-commerce seems to have a better memory than brick and mortar stores, quickly scrutinizing shoppers' purchasing and browsing habits to provide recommendations and offers to keep them coming back.

As the banks behind Early Warning's clearXchange network start to flex its muscles, one of their important tasks will be to convince business clients it's worth it to collect funds through a process designed for person-to-person payments.

Bottomline Technologies and Global Processing Services have partnered to bring consumers 'banking lite' card services.

With the rise of global e-commerce, small and midsize companies are pressured to streamline the way they handle increasingly diverse types of payments.

Facing more payments because of high-deductible insurance plans, 72% of consumers say they prefer to use electronic payment methods such as payment cards, Automated Clearing House or digital wallets to cover health care costs.

Battling a sea of technology companies and major incumbents like Western Union and Travelex for a share of the international payments and currency exchange pie may seem like an uphill climb for a smaller company with less of a track record.

Microsoft is in the process of rolling out a mobile wallet for its small share of the smartphone market. But the company has been steadily developing this technology across much bigger platforms.