P-to-P payments

New patents provide a glimpse into how Apple Inc. plans to personalize the payments experience by harnessing Apple’s iMessage channel, bringing it in line with message-based P2P services from Venmo, Facebook, Google and others.

In an effort to expand its digital banking platform, 1st Advantage Federal Credit Union added Fiserv's Mobiliti mobile banking, Popmoney person-to-person payments and remote deposit capture.

Google Wallet was seemingly sidelined this year when Android Pay replaced it as Google’s flagship mobile payments app, but a recent update to the Wallet app shows that Google still sees potential in the aging brand.

The uncertain state of the prepaid card market doesn’t faze Texas entrepreneur Houston Frost, who has relaunched the Akimbo prepaid card, a concept he’s championed since 2011.

Mobeewave combined two Canadian staples — hockey and contactless payments — to test a technology that allows smartphones to pay 'each other,' and is now taking the concept on the road to other markets.

PayPal has completed its purchase of Xoom in an $890 million stock deal, the San Jose-based online payment company announced Nov. 12.

Apple is reportedly going to its bank partners with a pitch to tie in their scale to jump-start an Apple-branded person-to-person payment system.

Even with the prevalence of mobile P2P apps like Venmo and Square Cash, consumers still turn to cash, checks and PayPal most often to pay one another.

In what could be seen as another salvo in the battle between payments and financial services 'disruptors' and more traditional financial institutions, five large technology companies — Google, Amazon, Apple, PayPal and Intuit — have formed a lobbying and advocacy group.

The bank owners of the clearXchange payments network and the Early Warning risk management service hope that by combining the two programs, they can remain in control of technologies that will become core to mobile commerce.

Mobile person-to-person payment systems are poised to grow to about 126 million adult users by 2020 with nearly 60% of all mobile device owners using the service, according to newly published data from Javelin Strategy & Research.

The payments industry's next big challenge may be to get out of its own way and allow innovation to unfold in an open and collaborative manner.

The Faster Payments System in the U.K. and the New Payments Platform in Australia serve as excellent models to emulate, but it is not likely that the U.S. can create similar systems.

PayPal is targeting what it estimates to be a $51 billion global market for small debts owed between friends and family members, enabling consumers to set up their own URL to collect payments.

Switzerland's Migros is the country's largest retailer and employer, as well as the owner of a prominent local bank, giving the company an unconventional perspective on the costs and benefits of mobile payments.

JPMorgan Chase is now live on clearXchange, a multi-bank person-to-person transfer network that it helped found in 2011, but the competitive landscape for P2P has changed a lot in the intervening years.

Papa John's is integrating its mobile and online checkout process with Venmo, a PayPal-owned system that fuses mobile and social networking to enable person to person payments.

The design of Square Cash's new "$Cashtag" system may seem like a cutesy move to appeal to more consumers, but the underlying changes to the app show that Square's new focus is all business.

The London-based peer-to-peer money mover TransferWise Ltd. opened an office in New York this month, proclaiming plans to disrupt the U.S. market. But in reality, it could be more an ally than a threat to U.S. financial services companies.

As the Federal Reserve and other entities push toward developing a faster payments system in the U.S., it has become increasingly apparent that a good place to start is through debit networks.