The payments business has undergone a massive revolution. While online shopping technology has surged forward with better shopping cart systems, AI-assisted tools to help you find what you're looking for - even when you don't know what you want, and greatly improved user interfaces, payments have languished. Andy Barker, the head of payments at online commerce shopping provider Magento, and I spoke about this at the recent MagentoLive event.

Australians will finally enjoy the ability to send each other money in “real time”, with the launch of the New Payments Platform this week. The platform is a mixture of new processes for settling transactions between banks, guided by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

But while this may make payments faster, it could also make them less safe.

Letting anyone accept Apple Pay, Android Pay and credit cards on-the-spot, Square's tiny contactless reader puts a pop-up store in your pocket. So how does it stack up against other POS solutions? We tested the pint-sized device to find out.

Square is a nifty option for those retailers wanting to take credit card payments without hand their cash over to a bank. The company has just announced a bunch of new integrations with various Point of Sale (POS) systems and order management systems.

The numbers are in: 53% of payments made in Australia are now done with cards or mobile payment apps. Mobile-based tap-and-pay systems have seen a surge in usage of over 200% in the last 12 months. Australians are predicting that our country will be cash free by 2022 (in June, if you want to be really specific). So long, cash! It's been nice knowing you.