Online payments

Klarna recently received a banking license in Sweden, and is in the midst of an international expansion.

Ingenico's $1.7 billion deal to buy Sweden's Bambora will reduce the company's reliance on brick and mortar retail while arming it for battle in the highly competitive market for digital commerce and payments.

Because of the opaque nature of internet retailing and widely publicized data breaches, security concerns remain a pervasive gating factor to digital commerce. Key to countering this is providing consumers with the tools to monitor and control where their payment credentials are stored online.

Like almost everything else related to Amazon's incursion into retail, the company's premium loyalty program has achieved a scale that appears ready to swallow the rest of the industry.

Paytm Ecommerce Pvt., the latest entrant into India’s online retailing market, is taking a hard line with suspect merchants to avoid backer Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s reputation as a haven for fakes.

PayPal and Visa are extending their strategic agreement to Europe with a deal enabling PayPal to offer Visa debit accounts in Europe, expanding the locations where PayPal’s European consumer and business customers may make purchases with PayPal funds.

Payments services provider Worldline has agreed to acquire the Digital River World Payments unit of Digital River Inc. to bolster its online payments offerings to large merchant clients.

The number of channels consumers use to pay their bills is unlikely to decrease anytime soon, so billers that are able to check off every bill payment channel will enjoy a competitive advantage, writes Jim Lester, senior vice president of product management and strategy for biller solutions at Fiserv.

Shopify merchants selling in the U.S. will be able to list and sell products on eBay through a single dashboard via a direct integration between the two e-commerce giants that goes live this fall.

Information sharing is about to get much different in Europe, giving bank alternatives such as Klarna more to work with as they compete against the financial services establishment.

PayPal is launching a cross-border trade service to help small and mid-sized businesses in the U.S. improve their international presence and sales.

Among the sneakers, diapers and pet food for sale on Taobao, China’s biggest e-commerce platform, is a listing that may take up a little more space in the online shopping basket.

Stripe will collaborate with WeChat and Alipay to make it easier for merchants around the world to accept payments from Chinese consumers.

Wirecard's going after a big market. More than 2 million Chinese tourists visit Europe annually, spending on average about US$3,400 each.

The company contends a lot of current payments technology is focused on horizontal companies that are designed to easily enable payments, and are operating agnostic to the type of business that requires a payments gateway,

Consumers using the Alipay app will be able to find nearby merchants that accept the popular Chinese mobile wallet, and receive coupons for local deals.

Retailers are worried about the online giant’s move into bricks-and-mortar retailing. For example, Amazon's $13.7 billion acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc. wiped $17 billion off the value of Walmart.

Toronto-based nanopay Corp. is making MintChip, a digital currency it acquired in 2015 from the Royal Canadian Mint, available to merchants looking for a lower-cost payments channel by leveraging digital cash.

Not content to have Amazon and Walmart steal all the thunder, Target has begun a pilot of a grocery delivery service called “Restock,” with terms that are designed specifically to make its rivals look slower and more expensive.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. will invest another $1 billion to raise its stake in online mall Lazada Group SA to 83 percent, securing control of a fast-growing startup at the vanguard of its Southeast Asian expansion.