Online payments

Payments innovation normally migrates to the U.S. from Canada, which is at a more advanced stage of deployment with EMV-chip cards and other technology. But that's not the case for business-to-business payments.

For Cubic Transportation Systems, the term "NextCity" describes a city in which consumers use a single account for transit and parking while making payments through a smart card or mobile app.

Payvision has launched its global payment network in Canada through a partnership with Home Trust, a bank based in Toronto.

BlueSnap has launched a new system called ChargeLink to help businesses close sales over the phone.

Real-time payment systems must be interoperable if they are to succeed, Fiserv says. To this end, the vendor wants to enable an open network, but it faces stiff competition.

The annual Cyber Monday shopping holiday is a boon to mobile payments, but remains a significant challenge for e-commerce security.

Twitter Inc. is testing a way for users to redeem discounts through merchants' tweets, expanding its online commerce efforts.

Xoom Corp., a digital payments company based in San Francisco, has launched a mobile bill-pay service in Latin America.

BlueSnap says its partnership with First Data Corp. will result in fewer declined transactions for e-commerce merchants, thus convincing more of them to turn to the online gateway provider to support global sales.

Less than two weeks after expanding into 15 Latin American markets, online remittance provider WorldRemit has launched its services in the U.S.

Virtual Piggy, which provides the Oink online wallet service for their youths, will release a prepaid Discover card to extend its offering to retail stores.

Banks and other traditional payment companies need to keep an open mind when assessing the market today as new entrants build systems to disrupt the old models, said Christine Cumming, first vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

PayStand has established flat rates for online payments through electronic checks, saying its new format will allow non-profit organizations and service businesses to avoid credit card fees.

V-Key, a mobile security provider in Singapore, has received a $12 million investment from the Ant Financial Services Group, the Chinese financial services company that operates Alipay.

Conferma has integrated the MasterCard inControl service into its global travel payment network.

A week after making Discover the first credit card offered in its mobile bill-pay service, PreCash Inc. has already seen a spike in the use of Evolve Money, which previously accepted only debit cards.

Apple Inc. said customers in China can now use the country's most popular payment card for transactions on the App Store, as the iPhone maker seeks to woo users in the world's largest smartphone market.

Business-to-business payments are ripe for disruption and there are plenty of startups innovating in the space today. These newcomers, after being thwarted by corporate red tape, are finding a more welcoming audience from small businesses.

The co-founders of Mopay have officially joined the executive team of Boku, which acquired the German company last month.

Google Inc., citing a maturing e-commerce market, is telling merchants it will end support for its digital goods application programming interface. As such, they need to find another processor soon.