Mizuho Financial Group and IBM reported a test of the potential of blockchain for use in settlements with virtual currency.  By incorporating blockchain technology into settlements with virtual currency, Mizuho will explore how payments can be instantaneously swapped, potentially leading to new financial services based on this rapidly evolving technology. The pilot project uses the open source code IBM contributed to the Hyperledger Project.

Walmart knows customers want to save not just money, but also time. That’s why Walmart introduced Walmart Pay – a safe, easy, convenient way for customers to pay with their smartphones in Walmart stores.

Thoma Bravo, LLC, a leading private equity investment firm, today announced it has completed the acquisition of Bomgar, a leader in secure access solutions, from TA Associates. Financial details were not disclosed.

Discover is introducing a new option for merchants to streamline the checkout process for all chip cards leveraging Discover, Diners Club International and PULSE Networks. Discover Quick Chip will reduce the time a chip card needs to remain in the point-of-sale terminal, making the checkout process more convenient for merchants and cardholders. Discover Quick Chip provides merchants and acquirers with an additional option when processing chip card payments.

Capita Collaboration Technologies has appointed Simon Payne as managing director.

Simon has more than 20 years senior directorship and board experience, leading large organisations within the ICT industry in the UK, USA and Australasia. He has a strong focus on developing product strategies, as well as growing businesses organically and through acquisition.

I’ve written about Bitcoin and blockchain for half a decade, and now banks are all talking about it too. There is a belief that the blockchain technology that came from the Bitcoin structure could revolutionise banking. But there’s a problem, not with blockchain protocol, but with the hype and confusion that surrounds it. How will banks make any progress if no one understands it?

Lev Lesokhin, Executive Vice President of Strategy and Analytics at CAST, discusses the need for the UK Financial sector to modernise and improve its software performance.

Global technical body EMVCo today reports sustained growth in the worldwide adoption of EMV chip technology. Official figures of aggregated data show that by the end of 2015, the number of EMV payment cards in global circulation increased, year on year, by 1.4 billion to 4.8 billion.

In addition, EMVCo reports that 35.8% of all card-present transactions conducted globally between January and December 2015 used EMV chip technology*, up from 32% for the same period in 2014.