Bailey Reutzel

Ripple Labs, which facilitates payments in mainstream and virtual currencies, is creating a developer portal and supporting a new accelerator. Already its efforts have made it possible to connect the Ripple payment network to websites that run on Magento's e-commerce platform.

Pock.io is allowing consumers in the U.K. to buy gift cards from large merchants such as Apple by using Bitcoin and other digital currencies.

Leaf, a provider of tablets for payments, has hired several executives including a director at Heartland Payment Systems, which recently invested in the startup.

Cellum, a mobile commerce provider, has integrated MasterCard's MasterPass digital wallet with its own mobile wallet offering, OTPay, making it the first third-party in Europe to integrate MasterPass.

Some governments are getting into the digital currency game, offering their own alternatives to cash with traits that differ in meaningful ways from cross-border cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

The Royal Canadian Mint, which casts coins for the Canadian federal government, has started a pilot test of its MintChip digital currency. Through these tests, the Mint must make clear what this new currency is and what it is not.

Dash Software LLC, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based mobile payment provider that targets restaurants and bars, has raised $1.2 million in investment to launch its updated iPhone app in Manhattan.

IKaaz is launching a Near Field Communication mobile payments platform in Nigeria to take advantage of the proliferation of mobile devices locally and in other nations in Africa.

Account holders at MtGox, the massive Bitcoin exchange that abruptly shut down this may not be left completely empty-handed. If the Tokyo company files for bankruptcy, its customers could retrieve some of the funds it is holding hostage.

Ingenico's Roam is launching a mobile card reader with chip and PIN acceptance, and it expects U.S. merchants will want to use it to accept PIN debit transactions even before EMV-chip cards become widespread.

Silicon Valley Bank and MasterCard Inc. launched the Commerce.Innovated. accelerator to find and nurture innovators in payments technology.

Allowing merchants to set up recurring debits or pull money from a Bitcoin account seems in conflict with the Bitcoin protocol itself, which was built for push transactions, allowing consumers to have a better handle on what payments they make. But pull transactions are just what a partnership between Coinbase and Balanced will enable.

Amazon.com Inc. is expanding the use of its digital currency, Amazon Coins, to all apps and games in the mobile Amazon Appstore.

Mangopay has begun accepting several new currencies and offering new features to its payment system for marketplaces and crowdfunding platforms as it expands outside of Europe.

Mobile point of sale devices typically clip onto phones to allow the handsets to read card payments, but this approach is not the only option.

Square Inc. has introduced a new feature to its Square Cash person-to-person payment system, allowing users to request payments from a group of people or an individual.

The Bitcoin community is in limbo after two big exchanges halted withdrawals due to a technical feature within the Bitcoin protocol that allowed fraudsters to manipulate transaction IDs.

Daniel Lee has been accepting Bitcoin at his family's seven retail stores in Fort Greene, Brooklyn since March 2013 by having customers send the digital currency to wallet addresses he manages.

Pizza Patron is integrating Revel Systems' mobile point of sale system into its more than 100 restaurant locations, which had been using several different vendors' products to accept payments.

The Currency Cloud, an international payments provider, has extended its reporting functionality to allow clients to follow their outgoing and incoming transactions to speed up payments.