Retailers

There is a growing fraud problem encompassing much more than the direct value of lost merchandise. There is also manual order review, opportunity costs from false positives and the massive overhead of implementing fraud-fighting best practices, writes Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt.

Following the path paved by the checkout-free Amazon Go concept, the newly merged Albertsons and Rite Aid are developing their own technologies for faster and more efficient checkouts.

Innovations such as automated smart safes can make it easier to track the flow of paper money, reducing theft risk, and cut down on the number of armored truck pickups, according to Sam Bosch, president and CEO of Peregrin Financial Technologies.

Incumbent bank wires and checks, for example, carry slow settlement times and poor exchanges rates, while some newer fintech alternatives lack the interoperability with one another to scale and sometimes prioritize speed over security, writes Peter Shore, general manager of Transpay

The departure is likely to fuel speculation of a presidential run.

For some, the fast pace of change in payments technology needs to slow down for consumers and merchants to catch up. For others, the technology must evolve because it is the consumer and merchant seeking change — all in the name of an easier, mobile experience.

Supermarkets and other retailers reported rejected transactions after a network glitch, causing some to quickly deploy cash-only checkouts.

Many of these attacks have been server side ransomware and other sophisticated hacks, leading companies to examine the immature security processes, the technology of application security, and the insufficient expertise of development, writes Jeannie Warner, the security manager at WhiteHat Security.

Retailers often try to counter Amazon's dominance by using the e-commerce giant's strengths against it, including its reliance on search engine optimization.

Virtual reality is seeing significant leaps in technology, with immediate applications to gaming and entertainment that foreshadow richer applications for VR in commerce.