Online payments

For a time, the European payments market was considered fertile ground for the creation of a third card network to compete against heavyweights Visa Europe and MasterCard. This third network never came to be, but European banks kept the idea on the back burner as a way to compete against or even bypass the major card brands.

Visa's agreement to reunite with Visa Europe positions the global card brand to better address a world where payments and commerce have fewer borders.

Gift cards don't seem like the coolest technology in the payments world, but new and reinvented digital gifting platforms are changing the conversation – by borrowing text-messaging staples like emoji.

If Visa and MasterCard seem to be shining an extremely bright spotlight on their tokenization efforts, it's because they view it as vital to their survival.

MasterCard is talking to Merchant Customer Exchange executives about what role the card brand could play in the retailers' CurrentC mobile wallet, but the card brand insists it is just an interested observer in the merchant mobile wallet venture.

PayPal has long desired to be a force in brick-and-mortar payments, a strategy that's more vital than ever as the newly independent company pursues a course that distances it from its former owner, eBay.

With more smartphones coming equipped with technology that can read each user's fingerprint, it might be time to expand this idea and check the fingerprints of the device itself — particularly as mobile and e-commerce see more fraud as a consequence of EMV tightening up security at the point of sale.

Nearly every social media site is experimenting with 'buy buttons' today, but consumers' actual buying habits sometimes challenge the expectations of merchants and platform providers.

PayPal Holdings Inc.'s third-quarter sales missed estimates in its first report since the company's July separation from eBay Inc., revealing a rocky start to its first few months as a stand-alone company.

Making its first entry into the financial exchange space, Dwolla will provide real-time payments clearing and settlement capabilities for the CME Group futures and options marketplace.

As one of the fastest growing payment companies, all eyes are on Stripe. But if the industry expects the company to launch a sexy, new application they're unlikely to get it.

In responding to advancements in digital payments and consumer tech-savviness, Western Union has launched WU Connect to link its global money transfer services to messaging and social media platforms.

From mobile wallets to machine learning, from biometrics to Bitcoin, many examples of what the industry calls "emerging technology" have finally emerged. But change is happening slowly, as is usual in the complex financial services space.

Visa has introduced Visa Checkout, its online and digital wallet service, to Brazil.

Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey is giving a third of his Twitter stock to the company's employees, he said in a tweet Oct. 22.

Addressing the desire of small merchants that want a straightforward way to sell online, Square and Ecwid are partnering to synchronize sales and inventory between the physical and digital worlds.

More than a mere buzzword, "omnichannel" is as close as the payments industry has come to assigning a name to the group of actions that make up a complete purchase across the retail store, Web and mobile devices.

MasterCard plans to add its tokenization service to the MasterPass digital wallet to boost security for online and in-app purchasing.

Deluxe Corp. is buying data services firm Datamyx LLC from Halyard Capital for $160 million in cash.

Merchants that sell digital goods each spend an average of $10.1 million a year on fraud-related costs — and many expect fraud and chargeback costs to rise in the coming months in the wake of the EMV chip card migration at the point of sale.