Apple, Google, Sprint, Western Union, Visa: electronic wallets continue to attract investments from many of the world's largest and best-known companies.

M-payment, procure-to-pay (P2P), and other emerging payment techniques "The Payoff" covers each week are often regarded in terms of cost saving, logistic compliance, and automation. Those are crucial benefits, of course, and the easiest to quantify. What's truly exciting about these opportunities, though, is the way they'll qualitatively change your customers' experience in your stores.

Every day brings news of innovation in money and payments. Consider what turned up just since we reported on MasterCard's ambitions last week:

"Cashless society" means something different to law enforcement agencies, privacy advocates, consumer agencies, development consultants, retailers, and other constituencies. MasterCard has been in the news often lately, revealing what it thinks about the place of cash in a consumer society. Let's look at the evidence.