Retailers

Machine learning and voice recognition can ease the many pain points of drive-thru ordering.

For stores that don't want such a high-tech makeover, options for automatic checkout options are being built on a much simpler foundation.

The day after Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com Inc.’s mid-year sale, a company drone took off from a playground in the city of Xi’an to deliver one of the orders. The six-rotor craft is one of about 40 JD.com designed to cut delivery times.

The Cincinnati company sold 5 million shares in the payment processor, as it continues to scale back its ownership stake.

Businesses are accustomed to on-demand processes and easy digital transactions in the consumer app economy, and now expect the same experience in their business supply chains, according to Jamshed Khan, tech chief at LeaseQ.

Merchants don’t stick to the binary simplicity of online and offline anymore. They are reaching their consumers through a wide array of channels including mobile, kiosks, chatbots and call centers, writes TJ Sharkey, senior vice president of financial institutions, acquiring and processing at Mastercard.

When it comes to the pizza industry, online and mobile ordering has generally been the province of chains like Domino’s, Pizza Hut and California Pizza Kitchen. But smaller shops are looking to get a slice of this market.

Malaysian consumers may use GrabPay Credits to pay for GrabFood, rides and any participating merchants, by tapping the GrabPay icon, selecting pay, and scanning the merchant’s QR code.

Every transaction is traceable on the blockchain — though only to the addresses that initiated it. Compare this to Fedwire Funds Service and ACH payments, which don’t have this transaction history available, writes Bob Rutherford is the CEO and founder of Hedge.

The Supreme Court is tossing a wrench into online payment processing at a time when tariffs are already threatening popular cross-border e-commerce and online marketplaces.

Once companies can recognize their customers without constantly asking security questions, they can shower them with benefits to enhance the shopping experience while bolstering their brand, writes Robert Capps, vice president at NuData Security, a Mastercard company.

From regulations such as GDPR and PSD2 to conversations at major conferences, financial services and payment companies are coming to grips with how vital it is to step up ID protection, according to Lina Andolf-Orup, global product marketing manager at Fingerprints.

CRM solutions have proved useful in providing a technological infrastructure for gathering data on a customer, but they are just that—an infrastructure. The larger difficulty is often managing the content and messaging that goes through the CRM pipeline, according to Patrick Kehoe, executive vice president of Messagepoint.

The move from standard to real-time transactions adds another layer of complexity and creates further opportunities for fraudsters. Quicker transaction times increase the chances of fraudulent transactions going undetected, writes David Worthington, vice president of payments at Rambus.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can far exceed human capabilities. But AI is still only as good as the quality of data that's feeding the machine, according to Sunil Madhu, founder and chief strategy officer of Socure.

PayPal can combine its payment service, Braintree and Hyperwallet for a variety of use cases for online marketplaces and gig economy workers.

The Dixons Carphone hack shows again that merchants and payment companies need to do more to make data unattractive to thieves, according to Robert Capps, vice president of NuData Security, a Mastercard Company.

Scan-and-go payments and other mobile technology can redirect store resources toward more personal service to keep consumers in stores, according to Julian Wallis, retail director at Rambus.

Longtime Starbucks boss Howard Schultz was so invested in the company's mobile payments strategy that he once stepped down from his day-to-day duties to focus his full attention on the tech initiative. Without his involvement, will Starbucks lose its edge in fintech?

Microsoft is the latest to try to help a big retailer jettison cashiers — and the latest to discover how hard that is.