Online payments

MasterCard is unveiling an app that takes the Internet of Things to its logical extreme, stopping only one step short of becoming Star Trek's instant food replicator.

From fairly humble beginnings three years ago with the low-fee Bluebird prepaid Amex card and the Serve platform, Walmart has gotten more and more aggressive — and welcoming — with payments innovation.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s finance affiliate is seeking at least 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) in a second round of fundraising ahead of a planned initial public offering, a person familiar with the matter said.

The heaviest adopters of fintech products in major global markets have a lot in common: They’re young, urban and tech-savvy, and their use of digital financial services tools could double in the next year, a study from by Ernst & Young Global Ltd suggests.

The lowest-hanging fruit for payments efficiency is governments, which handle huge volumes of payments and generally lag private corporate payments in implementing automated processing.

Valve Corp. has agreed to work with UOL BoaCompra to accept payment on its online gaming platform, Steam, in Colombia and Peru.

Of all the companies in the payments landscape, few have changed as much as PayPal has in the past year. And heading into the new year, the newly independent alternative payments company is showing no signs of slowing down.

Uber has long taught that the best way to get consumers to pay with a mobile device is to make the payment almost invisible. Now, with the help of Facebook and Braintree, Uber is applying that philosophy to the rest of its business — and if Facebook has its way, other companies will again follow Uber's example.

Merchants using Mangopay to sell through online marketplaces will have an option to set up and accept recurring payments through GoCardless' direct debit network.

Competition for commercial clients is fierce, so banks are on the hunt for ways to keep their customers happy.