Retailers

The mobile point of sale pioneer Square has done much to expand its product range to stay competitive, and a few of those efforts have made the company more of a direct threat to banks.

Square's new card for business owners does something very bold with debit — and very troubling for banks.

Consumers are looking to Instagram and other social networks over traditional branding, according to Acceleration Partners' Robert Glazer.

Local payment methods cater to the technology and user-experience needs of specific regions, says Steve Villegas, vice president of partner management at PPRO.

Credit unions and smaller banks can differentiate themselves by returning to the passion for personal service that first anchored their success, and payments are central to this strategy, according to Deborah Matthews Phillips, managing director of payment strategy at Jack Henry.

Just a few years ago, tech companies imagined a world where Bluetooth beacons would push alerts to consumers' smartphones as they walked by a store or navigated its aisles. The tech isn't gone, but it's become more subtle in how it's being used.

As cashierless stores try to break out of the lab and into the real world, a deployment in Poland could open up as many as 5,000 locations to the technology.

Caper is expanding its AI-powered shopping cart nationally as Amazon looks to build a network of up to 3,000 cashierless Amazon Go stores.

Although most consumer-facing financial institutions now offer mobile applications, that doesn’t mean that they are ready for a world where smartphones are the primary point of contact with their customers, writes Rune Sorensen, a product manager at Nets.

Visa is working with handbag designer Rebecca Minkoff to debut a global program to fuel networking among women business owners, while also connecting them to companies in the Visa ecosystem such as Square and Yelp.

Marketing and venture capital veteran Allison Johnson will become PayPal's executive vice president and chief marketing officer — a new role at the payments company as it tries to monetize its Venmo app.

One of the few bright spots in Ingenico’s sagging revenue performance last year was double-digit growth within its global e-commerce unit, where it’s been experimenting with chatbots.

One of the concerns for no-cashier stores, beyond how well they work, is that they must also be placed in the middle of tech-friendly cities, where retail space comes at a high cost.

Self-checkout was only the beginning. In today's high-tech, mobile-driven world, there's a heightened demand for making purchases quickly and seamlessly. And it's a demand that no human could possibly meet.

U.S. companies have a leg up on international competition. Yet, many retailers are opting to focus on domestic customer bases, claims Steve Villegas, vice president of partner management at PPRO.

It may seem shortsighted, but online retailers need to be laser focused exclusively on what has traditionally worked to maximize online sales, writes Devaraj Southworth, co-founder and CEO of Thirstie.

The country’s largest grocery retailer, Kroger, is partnering with Microsoft to pilot two connected experience stores for a proof of concept, featuring new retail technologies that will eventually be deployed across Kroger stores and be sold to the retail industry.

Cashierless tech startup Standard Cognition has acquired the robotic mapping startup, Explorer.ai, to accelerate the rollout of its autonomous checkout solutions to retailers.

Banks, retailers and technology companies have spent years relentlessly working to replace cash with plastic, digital or mobile alternatives. And cash has hit back hard.

Square Inc. named Activision Blizzard Inc. executive Amrita Ahuja as chief financial officer, replacing Sarah Friar, who stepped down from her role as Jack Dorsey’s No. 2 at the digital-payments company last month.