American Express Co. agreed to spin off half its business-travel unit in a $900 million deal that creates a joint venture with a group that includes Qatar's sovereign-wealth fund.

Virtual Piggy, the provider of Oink payments, will provide its alternative payment system to the European Games Group, which has roughly 16 million players worldwide.

Deutsche Telekom and mopay are extending their carrier billing partnership, which allows consumers to make purchases by adding them to their phone bill.

Western Union Co. and mobile payment provider Paga are offering a mobile fund transfer service to residents of Nigeria.

PayPal's John Lunn doesn't mince words when talking about the work that needed to be done to repair PayPal's developer programs. "Just go back a bit in time, toward the end of 2012 and early 2013, we were losing touch with developers."

London-based Flypay Ltd. plans to end what it refers to as the "10-minute restaurant bill chase" at the end of a meal by offering a mobile application that speeds up payment while providing more customer data to restaurant owners.

These 20 women have reached impressive heights in a traditionally male dominated industry and have played a vital role in helping their organizations stay ahead of the curve.

Vickie Brown became First Data's chief operating officer of merchant processing this year, and she predicts her role will be exciting because of the fast-approaching deadline for adopting EMV-chip cards in the U.S.

Visa's Elizabeth Buse has been kept busy by the many advancements in payments technology happening around the world.

One of the biggest challenges Ann Cairns faced over the past year was working to spread MasterCard's financial inclusion mission into more countries where consumers lack banking networks and rely mostly on cash.

Sabrina Chin, who has been working in the payments industry for 17 years, is into a little bit of everything. She cooks. She oil paints. She runs in relay races. She does ballet.

Donna Embry is perhaps the only payments executive who's worn a shark costume onstage at a regional acquiring conference. But her stunt worked.

Janet Estep is surrounded by almost constant change, both in her own career and in the quickly evolving technology that pressures many of the established banks that make up Nacha's member roster.

Annmarie "Mimi" D. Hart, president and CEO of MagTek Inc., must have had a crystal ball at work in predicting for years that consumers would eventually demand a "Dick Tracy style" wristwatch computer for tasks such as payments.

Pamela Joseph is one of the top payments leaders at U.S. Bank, which has had a busy year.

Linda Mantia is excited about contactless payments. In her role as Royal Bank of Canada's executive vice president of cards and payments, she is in a position to use new technology to remove the hurdles that have long hindered the growth of mobile payments.

Diane Offereins spends much of her time as Discover's executive vice president for payments services working to unite the company's three payment networks — Discover Network, Diners Club International and the Pulse ATM Network — into one global payments business.

For Jennifer Miles, 2013 was quite a year to become president of VeriFone Americas, as the terminal maker embarked on aggressive pursuit of new payments technology to improve its performance.

Not long ago, executives at Visa and MasterCard viewed the entrepreneurs at independent sales organizations as sketchy, shady, fly-by-night con artists. Linda Perry, a former Visa executive, did a lot to change that perception.

Sandra Pianalto encourages women entering the payments industry to "embrace uncertainty, and take charge of your career by raising your hand for the tough assignments."