Online payments

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.