Online payments

Amazon.com's decision to quietly shut down its digital wallet app last week shows an uncharacteristic caution on the part of the e-commerce giant. Merchants throughout the Web use the company's e-commerce services, but the mobile and digital payments world is considerably more cutthroat.

Intuit will integrate payment technology from Stripe to automate tax reporting for self-employed workers in the version of its tax-filing software QuickBooks targeted towards them.

The Federal Reserve System released a detailed vision for improving the speed of the U.S. payment system. It is latest step in a process meant to spur change at a time when the country has fallen far behind many nations that have adopted real-time payments.

If consumers, designers and artists led the discussion about how we make payments in the future, they would likely come out with a vastly different system than the one technologists are creating today.

WePay is looking to boost transaction activity among its small business users by offering access to Google Wallet with minimal steps.

Even in an alternative universe that exists only in cyberspace, real money is vital to the economy. Digital payments company Skrill hopes to bridge the real and virtual worlds to benefit its digital wallet.

Across the world, startups are using digital delivery to challenge companies like Western Union and MoneyGram, a battle that in recent months has become increasingly heated.

One of the most challenging IT issues is proving ROI, establishing that a specific technology rollout had a measurable impact on business goals. But Tesco is making a powerful case for proving the ROI of 3-D technology its apparel e-commerce business used to achieve a 24% plunge in online returns.

Digital payments company ACI Worldwide has begun offering bill pay services on ATMs and kiosks sold by LD Systems.

While real-time payment technology is a hot topic among banks in the U.S., real-time data analysis is likely to come much faster.

Retailers are adopting many innovations to counter the lure of online shopping, which is becoming more of a threat to brick-and-mortar stores as e-commerce spreads to a growing number of Internet-connected devices.

Banks in Europe are selling digital gift cards alongside traditional bank accounts, allowing online consumers to buy credit for Facebook, Nintendo, Spotify and other content providers.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is in talks to buy a minority stake in India's One97 Communications Ltd., owner of an online payments processor, according to people familiar with the matter.

Education payments company peerTransfer has grown quickly by providing a specialized service to a specific market, but it may be time for it graduate to new lines of business.

Government officials in Gujarat will partner with MasterCard to pursue a goal of being the first state in India to have a digital payments system.

PayPal is enabling monthly installment for larger purchases and offering business consulting, a move that will allow the company to handle larger transactions and extend its merchant services.

French payment companies are stepping up the use technology that can spot certain types of card fraud that are not prevented by EMV-chip security.

The earliest implementations of the 3D Secure e-commerce system amounted to a password for consumers' payment cards and a link between consumer and card issuer — an idea that is growing stale in a world where consumers are able to authenticate payments with more sophisticated tech.

Skrill, an e-commerce provider based in New York, plans to offer its digital wallet as a payment option in Second Life, the once-popular virtual world game that was released in 2003.

EBay Inc. named Bonnie Hammer, chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, to its board as the 10th independent director, bringing in an executive with a background in consumer and social-media content.