POS and Retail

The mobile wallet is still a niche product, but many companies worldwide made big strides in bringing secure payments to handheld devices. Some of the most groundbreaking changes happened just in the past year.

Fifth Third Bancorp in Cincinnati plans to record a large fourth-quarter gain after selling shares in payment processor Vantiv.

It used to be that chargebacks were just another cost of doing business. But with the e-commerce world growing by leaps and bounds, online merchants are experiencing a corresponding spike in chargeback rates that's eroding their bottom lines and jeopardizing their merchant accounts.

Merchants today face the daunting task of investing in several payment technology upgrades at once, and the confusion surrounding this process could bolster many pre-existing security vulnerabilities, argues point of sale security expert Chris Strand.

While Apple Pay has been received favorably since its launch last year, Google was technically the first mobile payments system on the block with their since re-branded Google Wallet. Android Pay is their latest foray into mobile payments and Google is set to drive agenda forward with significant advantages in adoption, capability, and compatibility.

Paychex in Rochester, N.Y., has entered an agreement to acquire Advance Partners in Cleveland.

Krispy Kreme's new payment and loyalty app is betting big on customers' appetite for donating to charity.

Innovation and flexibility aren’t attributes often associated with public transportation. But by deploying cutting edge open payment ticketing technologies, transit operators can give their customers greater flexibility and create a more engaging transit network.

IPayment Inc., a payments processor for more than 150,000 U.S. merchants, is exploring options including a sale that could value the company at as much as $1 billion, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Despite the House Financial Services Committee's passage of a bill to convert the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's leadership structure from a single director to a commission, Democrats have largely opposed the bill.

Payments technology company BlueSnap has launched its mobile checkout gateway, the Powered Buy Platform.

Lovers of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and coffee now have a mobile app to pay for their purchases and receive rewards.

Swatch Group AG plans to start selling a timepiece that can make contactless payments in the U.S., Switzerland and Brazil early next year through an agreement with Visa Inc.

The holidays are approaching, and mobile is going to play a bigger role in e-commerce than ever before. Last year, mobile holiday shopping traffic surpassed desktop for the first time and retailers are expecting even higher mobile traffic this year.

Amazon.com is big enough to try things that other retailers would find too risky. Over the years it has developed many groundbreaking payment technologies and revolutionized e-commerce, but not all of its ideas have done well.

Between regulatory and competitive pressures, ISOs have a lot on their plate for 2016, particularly for the most growth-hungry companies. Here is some food for thought for ISOs as they plan their strategies for the year ahead:

Payroll cards are part of the emerging mobile payments capabilities that are shifting the nature of financial transactions.

ShopKeep's most recent survey of its 20,000 merchant clients shows two mobile payment trends at odds with one another.

The volume of payment apps is reaching critical mass. From retailers to coffee shops to airlines, companies across virtually every industry have developed a mobile app to make the payments experience simpler and faster for their customers – and to gather more data on who they are and how they spend their money.

There is a whopping $630.5 billion bonanza of holiday shopping projected to occur this holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation. Though if retailers aren't ready to accept chip cards and mobile transactions, they could miss out.