The imaginatively named New Payments Platform (which is a great name until it's replaced one day) promises to make it easier to send money between parties. One of the first applications to use the NPP will be PayID. It will let you send money to other people without having to remember annoying details like BSBs or account numbers.

You create your own unique identifier and funds can be moved between parties in near real-time - no need to wait for batch runs of payments between financial institutions. But how do you get in on this?

It's one of the toughest parts of running a business - getting clients to pay their invoices on time. There are fewer things more frustrating than doing a job for a client, who until that point has been nothing but friendly and accomodating, only to find they are diabolically slow at paying their bill. While there can be good reasons - there are times when everyone's cashflow is impacted by some factor outside their control - some clients are just bad payers. So, what can you do about them?

It's getting easier and easier to set up a low cost point of sale system. With tablets and smartphones delivering apps that can integrate wth finance and stock control systems, it's possible to roll your own PoS easily. And payment services now mean you can skip the bank when looking for an EFTPOS terminal. From today, Vodafone will be selling the Square Reader for just $5 when bundled with selected mobile plans.

Mastercard has announced their next generation credit card. With an integrated fingerprint reader, the new cards are being tested in South Africa with a leading supermarket and a couple of banks participating in the trial.

One of the most persistent concerns that for small businesses is cash flow. It's no surprise given that Australian companies are ranked as the worst in the world when it comes to paying outstanding invoices, according to a recent report. In particular, big businesses drag their feet when it comes to paying small businesses. Now the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Kate Carnell has launched an inquiry into the matter and is looking at possibly bringing in some regulation that will punish larger organisations that are late in paying money owed to the smaller end of town.

What do you do when you've finally paid off your credit cards, student loan or other debt? Where does the money you spend on those payments go? If you don't have an answer to that question, get one before you pay it off.

It's easy to get stiffed on payments when you're a freelancer. You often have to do the work first before the person who hires you hands over their cash. However, you can still maintain some leverage to make sure you get paid.

After spending decades keeping its payment technologies behind closed doors, Visa has flung open the gates to welcome external developers to use its application programming interfaces (APIs). The new Visa Developer platform will allow banks, merchants and tech companies to take advantage of the vendor's payment technologies and weave them into their own software and apps. Here are the details.

Samsung Pay is coming to Australia. Some time this year, we'll see yet another contactless payment system that lets you use your phone to buy groceries or shop in stores. Samsung's attempt, though, seems to be the most versatile and powerful yet for customers, and potentially the most trouble-free for banks to implement.

Android/iOS: We've all had times where we wanted to challenge a buddy or coworker to a friendly wager, or maybe just a dare. "Loser buys pizza," or "owes me a drink," or even "gives five dollars to my favourite charity." Parlay is an app that makes that easy, and makes cashing in easy too.

Payments service provider, eWAY, has released an app for the Apple Watch that allows merchants to accept payments through the wearable device. The app is compatible with eWAY's existing mobile payments platform and point-of-sale hardware.

The Commonwealth Bank is piloting a targeted offers program where customers can receive deals directly onto their mobile devices when they're physically in shopping centres. The bank doesn’t want to bug people with deals they don’t like so it has opted for a Tinder-like system to gauge customer preferences.

Cash by Optus is the latest mobile payments solution to enter the local market and the first to be offered by an Australian telco. Like other contactless payment systems, it allows customers to instantly pay for goods and services below $100 with their Android devices. Best of all, the service isn't tied to a specific bank and uses your phone's inbuilt NFC which means no sticker is required. Hurrah!

Apple Pay has launched to much fanfare. People with the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus are now able to make credit card payments at certain shops and restaurants in the US. But Apple Pay isn't the first of its kind and the technology it uses has actually been around for the past 15 years. So why has it taken so long to enter the mainstream?

So this is a nifty extra on the soon-to-be-released Samsung Galaxy S5. If you have a Commonwealth Bank or Westpac account, you can use the phone's built-in NFC for fast Tap 'N Pay payments.

QuicklyPay.it is a new "IOU" mobile app that allows you to manage split bills and group payments securely. What sets it apart from other IOU apps like Splitwise is that you can send and receive cash directly using the digital currency Bitcoin.

If you want to add credit card payment options to a web site or mobile app, eBay-owned PayPal is the dominant choice, but not the only one. Rival payment service Braintree has officially launched in Australia, promising easier integration and no need to sign in via a separate site.

Billing and payment systems are eye-wateringly dull. Nobody sane wants to make a career from this kind of financial tedium and teeth-numbing API integration. But that makes them an ideal candidate for a cloud service: that way, someone else can take care of all the hideous detail.

Sounds good to me: Medicare is going to eliminate cash payments in its offices from this year, offering instant direct deposits into your bank account using your EFTPOS card instead.