One reason China’s Ant Financial Services Group and Tencent Holdings Ltd. are interested in facilitating mobile payments for Chinese travelers in foreign markets, including the United States, is that both companies are topping out in their home market. Combined, Ant’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat Pay controlled an estimated $15.5 trillion …

Walmart Inc. shoppers apparently aren’t as loyal to the giant retailer’s own mobile-payment service as they are to Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay. That’s one takeaway from the latest Mobile Pay Tracker from Auriemma Consulting Group. New York City-based ACG found that Walmart shoppers who use Apple Pay and have a …

After weeks of listless trading, Bitcoin has rallied over the past 24 hours, shooting up from the high-$6,000s to the mid-$7,000s in a move that has brought new energy to other leading cryptocurrencies. Coincidentally, Mastercard Inc. on Tuesday was awarded a patent for a system that could allow users of …

While the opportunity to earn interchange on transactions made on its new Venmo debit card seemingly answers the oft-asked question of how PayPal Holdings Inc. plans to leverage its free peer-to-peer payment service, the full answer runs much deeper. Interchange is only one piece of the puzzle. A much larger …

Canadian fintech Mobeewave could see its contactless-payment service for Samsung smart phones expand thanks to a new agreement with National Bank of Canada. And this week a British financial trade group announced that contactless payments in the United Kingdom jumped 97% in 2017. Dubbed National Bank Easy Pay, the service …

Adyen touts its omnichannel approach. It has integrated e-commerce with in-store sales, for example, at hip men’s clothier Bonobos. The Dutch processor’s growth locomotive, however, is, and for the foreseeable future will remain, e-commerce. While not enjoying Mastercard’s network power, Adyen has built platform economics by credentialing and securely integrating …

Worldpay Inc. is adding another tool for financial institutions in their efforts to curtail the pricey and nuisance-laden aftereffects of rampant data breaches. The company’s solution comes in the form of credit and debit cards that use a dynamic card-verification value. Cincinnati-based Worldpay is testing the Motion Code-enabled credit and …

In the United States, at least, mobile wallets and contactless transactions in general have been a hard sell, but now research results issued Wednesday indicate so-called frictionless payments may themselves hold less attraction for consumers than many had thought. Apps that allow users to set up a payment method and …

Long outclassed by nimble tech players, financial institutions are finally scoring points in the P2P payments game with the rapidly growing Zelle network. But nobody’s conceding defeat in this much-coveted market. Keeping track of the players in peer-to-peer payments is like following an ensemble cast—a playbill is needed to identify …

Ever since Apple Pay launched in the fall of 2014, observers have questioned why the mobile-payment service hasn’t caught on with consumers. One possibility is that the service’s contactless capability remains foreign to most consumers. That could change next month, when Apple Inc. is expected to widen the range of …