Retailers

The new optimism is fueled by rising standards of living, increases in smartphone usage and cheap data plans that are boosting internet penetration across the nation. Perhaps most important, India is the last big retail market still up for grabs, with an internet economy projected to double to $250 billion by 2020.

New Merchant Advisory Group chief John Drechny will push open standards for payments acceptance and security technology that doesn't impact customer experience.

Nedbank Money users can store payment card data in just one app for all the main South African scan-to-pay schemes, representing a combined footprint of over 100,000 retail points of presence and 800 billers.

There is space for banks to enter a market they largely ignore, according to William Phelan, president of PayNet.

The Lightning Connector eliminates the need for merchants using the Square Reader to rely on a 3.5mm headphone jack of a smartphone or tablet to operate with its mobile app.

Institutions must enhance their fraud prevention strategy, and the most effective and successful way for doing so is by empowering customers to detect and respond to suspicious activity before the funds ever leave their account, writes Deborah Peace, CEO of ACH Alert.

Google can’t underestimate the importance of its maiden voyage with Google Wallet and the lessons the company learned in being one of the first to offer payments through cellphones in the U.S.

The retailer-driven Merchant Customer Exchange initiative to create a common mobile wallet had good intentions, but it overlooked the nature of retail itself — that each company has to differentiate itself to lure customers.

Along with activating contactless payments at its store terminals, Costco has opened its checkout lines to Apple Pay, Samsung Pay and Google Pay. But there’s a catch.

Bitcoin's scale and energy consumption have held it back as a payments option, but there are advancements that can change that, according to Jan-Willem Burgers, Europe technology lead with the distributed ledger practice at Capgemini.