Google has upgraded Google Wallet to allow shoppers to automatically track their online orders.

Visa has hired Ramon Martin, who was previously with American Express, for the newly created job of global head of merchant sales and solutions. Visa also announced that Elizabeth Buse, who heads its global solutions group, plans to retire March 31 after 16 years at the company.

Starbucks Corp., the world's largest coffee-shop operator, will test a smartphone service this year that lets customers order items ahead of time at some U.S. cafes, part of a push to promote its mobile application.

Becoming a licensed money transmitter throughout the U.S. is a time intensive and costly process many Bitcoin businesses are struggling with. But the costs of compliance could be cut substantially with the proactive step of hiring in-house compliance officers.

E-commerce payments processor 2Checkout is attempting to win over businesses by enabling the potential clients to accept transactions before it fully vets them.

Corethree Ltd. is providing a mobile ticketing application to those who use the First U.K. Bus fleet in Great Britain.

Bluetooth beacons are finding their way into retail stores and bank branches as a way to enable mobile payments and streamline customer interaction. But are they too intrusive?

WorldRemit Ltd., an online money-transfer service that lets people send cash across the globe, raised $40 million from Accel Partners to help the company take on Western Union Co. and MoneyGram International Inc.

BBVA Compass has been fast to flesh out the payments capabilities of its mobile banking app, and this work has attracted a growing and engaged mobile customer base.

MoneyGram International is now providing money transfer services to customers of Debenhams, a global department store based in the United Kingdom.

Electronic payments provider ACI Worldwide has launched an upgrade of its consumer payments platform that handles transactions in real time.

Three months after coming to light, the massive exposure of 40 million card accounts at Target Corp. still has the payments industry and consumers talking about what should be done to prevent this happening again. In the United States, that is.

Starbucks, which handles more than 11% of its weekly transactions as payments from its mobile app, is planning to add several new features for iPhone owners.

Contactless card payments are building a fan base in the United Kingdom, where their use has spiked in the past year, but the product is still a long way from replacing magnetic-stripe cards.

Preparing for a Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance assessment is a major task for any size organization.

The growing complexity of technology is forcing payments providers to ask whether they are better off becoming one-stop shops or building a network of partners to fill out their offering.

Digital currency exchanges may soon file formal proposals and applications to operate under regulations set by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

EMVCo, the EMV standard governing body has released specifications for payment tokenization, a process that it says will strengthen security on card-not-present transactions initiated by EMV-chip cards.

The payments processor TSYS has added features to its Credit Care tool to improve data access for banks and cardholders.

Mobile banking technology company Monitise is attempting to make account alerts two-way conversations, with an eye on marketing and security capabilities for payments applications.