POS and Retail

Investors are making bets on checkout-free retail, a category that is just as challenging as it is innovative. But it's payment technology's race to the moon, a chance to seize a favorable position in the struggle to save retail.

Walmart has filed a patent application for a digital currency that, like Facebook's Libra, would be a stablecoin backed by traditional currencies. And it envisions a very specific use case where its coin could stand in for cash — or even for a bank account.

Square has worked hard in the past several years to offer more than just mobile card acceptance, but not all of its efforts have paid off.

Younger consumers still like to go to the mall. Keeping them there requires a mix of easy payments, financing and shopping in multiple channels, says Nufar Segal, general manager of consumer financing for at Jifiti.

Most cloud storage systems have gaps that open the door to account takeover, API attacks and other threats, argues Pravin Kothari, founder and CEO of CipherCloud.

Square Inc. is selling its Caviar food-delivery app to DoorDash Inc. for $410 million, as the money-losing payments company searches for profits.

Standardizing charge backs would make management easier, and merchants would only have to understand one set of protocols, which could also standardize responses, says Monica Eaton-Cardone, COO of Chargebacks 911 and CIO of its parent company Global Risk Technologies.

Amex's multi-merchant rewards coalition, Plenti, may have failed, but ExxonMobil never gave up on the program's potential.

The Fed's involvement will inject competition into the market and offer merchants choice as they weigh their payments acceptance options, argues John Drechny, CEO of the Merchant Advisory Group.

Long overshadowed by food delivery startups such as Uber Eats and on-demand delivery service players such as Postmates, delivering fuel to a consumer’s vehicle is a convenience service that is growing in the U.S. and other markets.