The guide has a slightly different name now, but the same purpose—to seek out and describe the nonbank players, apart from the big networks, that are rewriting the rules for the digital exchange of value.

Since 2004, Digital Transactions has traced the course of payments innovation through its nimblest practitioners—the startups, the fintechs, the smaller networks, the nonbank arrivistes—and their services and products, their strategies and tactics, their successes and pratfalls. In 2009, we distilled what we were learning about these innovators into a handy guide inside the May issue, and called it a “field guide” to what were then known, somewhat cheekily, as alternative payments.

Well, the guide worked out so well we decided to update it every May. And so you now hold in your hands the 12th edition. Only now, in recognition of what the guide and this magazine have been about all along, we’ve rechristened it as a guide to innovative, rather than alternative, payments. We think the new adjective better fits our purpose in sorting out the varied new pathways the nonbanks, and yes, banks and major networks, are forging for the payments business.

Much, however, has not changed. The guide is still as much about strategies and tactics as it is about emerging technology and new markets. And so we invite you to read this guide much as you have since 2009, with an eye to how it might inform your decisions, sharpen your competitive instincts, and bring to light, perhaps, some developments you had not encountered before—as well as spotlight some potential partners.

Digital Transactions generally defines an innovative payment system as any network or consumer interface (a mobile app, for example) that enables payments in a way that relies on or stands apart from a major network and/or stands between that network and the consumer in an important way. We emphasize consumer-facing payment systems, but of course many, if not most, of the systems profiled here market themselves to merchants to maximize acceptance of their products.

Information for the listings comes from news reports over the past year, company Web sites and spokespersons, and financial filings in a few cases. We list pricing for the merchant and consumer when it is relevant and publicly available. The “Founded” line refers to the year the particular service was founded, not the parent company, except in those cases where the two coincide.

Kohl’s Pay

Parent: Kohl’s Corp

Headquarters: Menomonee Falls, Wis.

Founded: 2016

Web: Kohls.com

Field Notes: The Kohl’s Pay app allows customers to redeem offers, rewards in the chain’s Yes2You program, and Kohl’s Cash in one barcode-based flash. But it faces a huge challenge now that Kohl’s has closed all of its approximately 1,100 stores in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The app is designed for speed at checkout. “When we say fast savings at checkout, we mean really fast,” the company says on its Web site. The developer is Omnyway Inc., a 6-year-old startup cofounded by Bill Melton, well-known in the payments industry as a founder of point-of-sale terminal vendor Verifone.