Payments

Few would dispute that the U.S. ought to move to a faster payment system. But the hurdles to modernizing the infrastructure are daunting, said participants in a panel at this week's Retail Banking 2015 conference.

Starbucks Corp. will expand its mobile- ordering service to four Western states, building on a test that lets customers in Portland, Oregon, transmit their requests for lattes and mochas before entering a store.

A lot of change in the payments business is unavoidable, such as EMV-chip cards and mobile commerce, so the high-tech card maker Stratos plans to replace its cards each year as part of a membership program.

Industry groups are urging the Pentagon to soften its proposed expansion of a rate cap on loans sold to service members, but banks face opposition from dozens of advocacy groups that favor tougher restrictions.

It is fitting that Apple CEO Tim Cook opened the Apple Watch presentation by showing off a Mickey Mouse watch face. The Apple Watch shares a lot more than its design sense with Disney's successful MagicBand wearables.

Digital money transfer company Xoom is working with the bank HBL to enable instant deposits in more Pakistani bank accounts.

James Anderson, senior vice president of shared platform services in the emerging payments group at MasterCard, has been "droning on" for nearly a decade about contactless payments. And the industry is finally catching up.

The 20 women we honor this year have advanced the pace of innovation, challenged competitors and fueled the creativity and ambitions of their colleagues.

The retail services market is flooded with Web-based developer tools that allow small businesses with little tech expertise to develop payment capabilities. But to companies like vCita, these toolkits are still too hard to use.

Transfast has upped its game in Kenya, offering instant deposits to three banks in the country and connecting its service with M-Pesa mobile money accounts, a poster child for mobile payment success.

Merchants are far from helpless bystanders as Apple and banks sort out who is responsible for stopping fraudulent cards from being enrolled in the Apple Pay mobile wallet.

Apple Pay, which pre-rollout was praised for its security features, was in the center of a storm this week when some called the security of Apple's mobile wallet into question, claiming that 6% of transactions are fraudulent.

Mobile technology has enabled financial services in a number of African countries, and MasterCard is working to expand this model by tying it directly to a national identity program in Egypt.

WASHINGTON—CUNA has filed an amicus brief in a Florida lawsuit the trade group believes could drive credit unions right out of the credit card business.

Japanese mobile app provider Line Corp. will use CyberSource's e-commerce payment services to expand the Line Pay mobile payment service by supporting more payment options.

Mobile network operators have faced setbacks in mobile payments, but some experts insist they still have a place in the market. Others are not so sure.

PayPal will be an attractive payments partner and is open to new alliances after completing its spinoff from parent eBay Inc., PayPal's incoming chief executive Dan Schulman told investors.

A South African payments company has established a consumer-facing subsidiary in London to enable its worldwide expansion over the next few years.

MasterCard and Visa are using Samsung's mobile wallet to further the adoption of tokenization and other security methods at the point of sale, but safety concerns still cast a shadow on mobile payments and commerce.

MasterCard has entered into an agreement with African mobile banking and payment services company eTranzact International to provide remittance services to Nigerian consumers.