Online payments

There's no shortage of upstarts trying to cut cost, time and risk out of global money transfers. To maintain its position, Western Union is investing in the technologies it finds the most promising while keeping others at arm's length.

The market for international e-commerce in China is growing much faster, and working much more smoothly, than attempts by Western companies to launch within the country.

Icahn Associates Corp., the fund run by billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn, sold its remaining eBay Inc. stake at the same time as it reported a 3.8 percent holding in the Internet auction company’s spun off payments unit PayPal Holdings Inc.

After years of supporting payments research and building a reputation of being friendly toward technology startups, American Express is bringing its key technologies under the Amex Enabled Digital Solutions umbrella.

Video games have long been supportive of new payment systems, in part because many games cater to an audience that may be too young to have a traditional bank account or credit card. But can gamers also be a good target market for financing?

MasterCard has made a series of changes to its executive slate, including the appointment of a chief information officer.

Amazon is constantly unleashing new payment-related products and services. Some efforts succeed, some fail and the rest are a mixed bag — but regardless of the outcome, retailers have a golden opportunity to learn from Amazon's experimentation.

MasterCard is extending its Zero Liability protection to cardholders and small businesses in all of its markets in an effort to recalibrate the program to match the realities of digital commerce.

U.S. Bank is making a small-business online payment management system available to consumers.

In what could be seen as another salvo in the battle between payments and financial services 'disruptors' and more traditional financial institutions, five large technology companies — Google, Amazon, Apple, PayPal and Intuit — have formed a lobbying and advocacy group.