LAS VEGAS — With the manner in which credit unions and their members interact changing with every technological development, CUs need to master the art of outreach.

WASHINGTON — To hear the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau tell it, the private student loan market is a mess, filled with angry borrowers many of whom claim to have been taken advantage of by banks and servicers.

Bitcoin adopters in Ohio have been some of the most vocal about how state laws need to evolve to encourage the use of digital currency, but the Ohio government seems to want that change to come from the courts rather than the legislature.

The perception that Africa is behind the times when it comes to the payments industry is an interesting one. It is easy to assume that the continent as a whole is still cash-based with large rural unbanked areas widespread across the region.

Starbucks Corp. is testing its first order-ahead mobile application this year in Portland, Oregon, in a bid to speed up service and boost sales.

Three massive companies, Alipay, Apple and PayPal, are on a collision course as they move to shake up the global e-payments market.

Apple, which launches its mobile wallet on Oct. 20, has convinced more than 500 banks to support Apple Pay by early next year.

Web standards developer W3C has formed the Web Payments Interest Group to create security and customer experience standards.

American Express Co. is pulling new levers to build its business with small merchants and drive mobile wallet adoption, emphasizing its work with Apple Pay.

Next year's updates to the Payment Card Industry data security standards will give compliant retailers better protection, but hackers will be targeting the weaknesses of companies that don't put in extra effort.

PayPal’s pending spin-off from eBay has the company poised to attack the mobile payments space with renewed vigor, and Apple Pay brings one of the largest and most successful consumer technology companies into the field as well.

PayPal is on track to handle 1 billion mobile transactions this year, but the company can't yet say it will benefit from the imminent launch of Apple Pay.

American Express Co. said third-quarter profit rose 8.1 percent, beating analysts' estimates, as customer spending increased.

The growing prevalence of Internet-connected devices, along with a seemingly endless string of data breaches, is creating more opportunity to convince retailers to safeguard sensitive account data through new technology.

FICO is joining The CardLinx Association, which develops standards for card-linked offers.

TD Bank NA, which lost electronic files containing information for as many as 260,000 customers in 2012, agreed to pay $850,000 to settle a multistate probe into the security breach, New York's attorney general said.

I'd be hesitant to say that mobile payments are ubiquitous today, but during a four-day trip to Texas, I got to see just how far the technology has come when I lost my physical wallet with all my plastic cards.

Alipay, the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. financial affiliate controlled by Jack Ma, is trying to gain a foothold with U.S. retailers by offering them tools to help sell to consumers in China.

Fuel retailers may shudder at the potential costs of upgrading gas pumps for EMV chip-based card acceptance, but they are a prime target for vendors offering secure mobile payments and deeper fraud-screening analytics.

The financial industry is making payments better, more efficient, simpler—and faster.