Retailers

In many emerging markets, daily financial transactions—buying groceries, paying a utility bill, cashing a paycheck or billing a customer—are notoriously difficult. Banking institutions are few and far between, and large swaths of the population have little or no access to them.

A year from now, Sionic Mobile will have distributed 100,000 free iBeacons to small businesses, a $1 million marketing play the company hopes secures its place among local stores as they start to adopt mobile technologies.

Vantiv had a specific vision in mind when acquiring Mercury Payment Systems two years ago to provide the ultimate playground for app developers to operate in a multi-channel world.

When Amazon launched Amazon Dash buttons, many observers predicted that the concept would completely upend the retail model. But recent market research shows that fewer than half of Amazon Dash purchasers have actually used the button.

While the growth of digital commerce is a universal concept, digital has and will continue to manifest itself different depending upon the industry vertical and its level of digital maturity.

They say to dress for the job you want, not the job you have, and First Data's Clover operation did just that.

Visa and PayPal have been at war for as long as PayPal has existed, and their recent cease fire could allow both companies to overcome the barriers they have spent years building between the worlds of digital and in-store payments.

Mastercard is betting its $920 million investment in the U.K.'s VocaLink gives it a significant edge in many emerging technologies, particularly in regions where it is lagging Visa in traditional card-based business lines.

So here we are, just weeks out from a post-Brexit vote world, and a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the U.K. as it is left to try and carve out its new place in this new paradigm.

Paris-based SlimPay, which built a following among European consumers using its service to make online purchases directly from their bank accounts, is broadening its reach to the U.S.