Online payments

Open development techniques have contributed to a boom in online and mobile commerce by making it possible for more applications to interact with one another, but now more attention is being devoted to how fraudsters exploit these systems at merchants, payment companies and card issuers.

PayPal's split from eBay was supposed to sweeten its appeal to merchants, but it’s also stoking rivals in the payments industry — in particular Visa CEO Charlie Scharf.

PayNearMe has long offered a service designed for consumers who prefer to use cash in a digital world, but even it has to accept the need to get on board with electronic payments.

The acceleration of the Affordable Care Act, along with the longer trend toward consumer-directed health care finance and high deductible plans such as health savings accounts, are decentralizing health care payments.

Coin-counting machines came into vogue in the 1990s when Commerce Bank started installing "Penny Arcades" in its branches throughout New Jersey. They were a huge hit for a while, but banks have soured on the machines in recent years as usage declined and maintenance costs increased.

Robots aren't yet coming to take over, but they will be taking orders — and MasterCard payments — at a handful of Pizza Hut locations in Asia.

With the rise of online card fraud and the availability of new EMV and encryption technology, a San Mateo, Calif.-based startup sees an opportunity to combine these new tools with a card reader called Chip Shield.

Google revealed a dizzying number of projects at this year's Google I/O event, and it is courting developers to turn each of them into a thriving commerce platform. Whether or not Android Pay was mentioned by name, it was an undercurrent of nearly every offering.

Google is helping developers cut steps out of the path to accepting digital payments with several key moves unveiled around the Google I/O developers conference taking place this week.

Fifth Third Bancorp has hired Citigroup's Melissa Stevens to the newly created position of chief digital officer and head of omnichannel banking.

As a supermarket chain with no supermarkets, FreshDirect has always been an early mover by design. That made Samsung's Internet-connected refrigerator a natural fit.

PayPal next month is cutting off purchase protection for payments to crowdfunding sites, as the model for raising seed money for projects online begins to mature. The new policy goes into effect June 25, the company noted in an update to its user agreement.

Dwolla has forwarded its proposal for faster payments to a Federal Reserve Board task force studying submissions as part of a national initiative, and its voice is one of several seeking to make a difference in the country's move to faster payments.

Counterfeit card fraud is finally on the way down as EMV creeps into the U.S. marketplace, but card not present (CNP) fraud through online channels is skyrocketing. It's too soon, however, to blame the EMV shift.

While it's generally good news when a business gets larger, that growth can quickly get stunted if the company gets hamstrung by a more complicated supply chain.

Jay Z’s music-streaming service Tidal has selected Ingenico ePayments as the platform to accept payments in 45 countries.

Five years ago, Dwolla took its ambitious approach to speeding up payments to financial institutions, viewing banks as a core audience in need of modernizing its aging infrastructure. But more recently, the company had to make a sharp course correction in its strategy.

The expansion of devices connected to the Internet of Things is raising security and privacy concerns, spurring the Smart Card Alliance (SCA) to take action.

Loyalty marketing is considered a substantial lure for mobile payments, but the introduction of new channels also complicates the strategy, according to Kevin Wray, the chief commercial officer at Switchfly.

Visa launched its Visa Developer platform earlier this year to open up to third-party developers and bring more attention to digital commerce, a move that gives its second annual "Everywhere Initiative" even more meaning.