Retailers

With the zeal and thoroughness that the EMV transition has been discussed and covered over the past six months or so, you’d think it was the only technological innovation hitting payment cards in the marketplace.

Apple Pay and Samsung Pay are coming to China in early 2016, in a potential defensive move by China UnionPay to fend off competition from domestic mobile payment rivals on the rise in China, including Alipay and Tencent.

Small to large retail vendors are constantly aspiring to improve customer experience, resulting in more friendly point of sale (POS) interactions.

London-based Powa Technologies has formed a 10-year alliance with China UnionPay to extend the PowaTag smartphone shopping app to CUP’s 1.3 billion credit and debit cardholders.

This year was huge for payments. We saw the mobile wallet wars ignite into an all-out game of “anything you can do I can do better, anything you can do I can do better than you.”

Following its promise to make mobile point of sale products a key revenue-driver for the company, Verifone Payment Systems released a new mobile card reader for independent and micro merchants.

One of the more perplexing elements of the slow, long-awaited march to EMV-chip cards in the U.S. is the lack of awareness that still pervades among merchants and consumers alike.

Many small banks and credit unions today offer convenient, in-house instant card issuance to their customers to stand out from the pack.

Global Payments and Heartland Payment Systems have a chance to create an international powerhouse focused on small to medium sized business, restaurant and education payments, if they can meld their technology post-acquisition and retain Heartland's management.

Despite the incessant fanfare around mobile wallets, biometrics and the Internet of Things, the slow-and-steady move to EMV security is in the spotlight of Verifone's revenue prospects in the coming year.

The general public is largely uninformed about what EMV is, why it is coming into the US and the benefits of adopting more secure payment technology.

Though it seems as if the Merchant Customer Exchange has been stuck in the same mud the past year — still testing its CurrentC mobile wallet with no true launch date set — much has happened to support those who believe the retailer joint venture could still land squarely on its feet.

Wirecard Group and Alipay are collaborating to provide European retailers with barcode technology enabling Chinese tourists to make point of sale payments using the Alipay mobile wallet app.

American Express has joined LendingTree’s credit card marketplace.

Versatile, high-tech digital gift card sales are going strong for this year’s holiday season, but in the latest sign that plastic cards many never die, eBay has partnered with gift card giant InComm to sell traditional gift cards online that will take up to 10 days to arrive by mail.

Dealing with late and missed payments from creditors is a chronic complaint of small businesses, who are often stretched too thin to chase down money owed to them. But a U.K.-based startup aims to attack that problem with YayPay, an automated invoicing platform with a bill-collections feature that launched this week in the U.S.

Exciting growth opportunities exist for small and medium businesses taking advantage of the ever-increasing holiday shopping season. However, amidst this positive backdrop, lurks the negative threat posed by hackers and cyber criminals that prey on holiday shoppers and businesses.

U.S. transactions processor Global Payments Inc. is in talks to buy smaller rival Heartland Payment Systems Inc., according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Even though Walmart has been a key member and driving force behind the Merchant Customer Exchange joint venture to establish a new mobile wallet, the retailer's addition of Walmart Pay to its mobile app is consistent with strategy, and will lead to a wave of individual bank and retailer initiatives.

Boku had to stay mum last week about its involvement in powering Apple Inc.'s carrier billing option in Russia, but there is no such gag order this week regarding the company's partnership with Microsoft.