POS and Retail

Despite the fervor over mobile wallets and banking, one day consumers may never need to open a dedicated bank or payment app.

Many of the factors that make Uber a natural fit for restaurant delivery don’t apply for groceries, according to Pradeep Elankumaran, founder and CEO of Farmstead.

American Express has positioned itself as a small-business champion for decades, but its partnership with Amazon illustrates the paradox of supporting mom-and-pop shops by enabling them to buy supplies from their largest competitor.

Ant Financial, Alibaba’s finance affiliate controlled by billionaire Jack Ma, agreed to buy a stake in the Brazilian payments firm StoneCo Ltd after the company prices its initial public offering, joining Warren Buffett in investing in Brazil’s booming financial-technology startup landscape.

Amazon.com Inc. and American Express Co. are upping the ante in their bid for small-business spending.

Today, you can sell anywhere in the world successfully with just a single payment gateway integration, writes Ralph Dangelmaier, CEO of BlueSnap.

As VR and AR mature, new possibilities open up for customer interaction in a virtual space.

PayPal reports it’s adding users to Venmo’s new initiatives quickly, pushing the company’s wish to monetize Venmo to what its CEO calls a “tipping point."

Square’s growth strategy has always been to aim higher with products and services that benefit larger businesses than the ones it originally targeted with its mobile card reader. Its newest product diverges from that path.

Banks currently enjoy the pole position, but until they revamp and modernize their lending processes to better compete with the speed and convenience of nontraditional lenders, they will continue to lose market share, writes Trevor Dryer, CEO and co-founder of Mirador.

Intent on rapidly capturing the value and benefits of these new services, companies too often take a path of least resistance to cloud assessment and operational planning, writes Justin Yunag, chief digital officer, financial services for Atos North America Operations.

Marks & Spencer is the first major U.K. retailer to launch a mobile scanning and payment app in its stores. Several U.K. supermarket chains have launched pilots of cashierless and checkout-free mobile shopping, but have yet to roll out services.

Allowing third-party access to bank data will open up the opportunity for far wider data aggregation than previously possible, writes Huw Davies, CCO of Token.

The fintech wave has nearly devoured the entire point of sale industry, as lone major holdout Ingenico weighs an unsolicited bid from an investment bank’s payments group.

The payments industry stood out as an active market for mergers and acquisitions during the first three quarters of 2018 with a 33 percent increase in transactions over the same period last year.

To remain competitive, retailers must always have one eye on the future. Mobile wallets offer a strategic platform for retailers to harness and promote emerging payment models, writes Julian Wallis, retail director at Rambus.

PayPal and Walmart are offering a cash-in and cash-out service from PayPal accounts within Walmart stores. It's the first time Walmart, one of the founders the defunct Merchant Customer Exchange, will accept a third-party mobile wallet.

Worldpay is combining the Worldpay Bankout solution, which will now deliver to 154 direct bank disbursement destinations, and Worldpay FastAccess enabled by Visa Direct.

While the fintechs that offer merchant loans usually argue they’re lending to the ultra-small businesses that banks don't serve, competitive forces will bring the technology companies deeper into banks’ domain.

Square CFO Sarah Friar, who helped lead the company's many forays into financial services, is leaving Square to become CEO of Nextdoor, a social network for local neighborhoods.