Bailey Reutzel

Customers will soon make purchases in Apple’s retail stores with the company’s new limited mobile wallet, Passbook, according to an Apple news site.

As financial institutions increasingly create specialized credit and debit cards and merchants continue to push loyalty cards, the overwhelming abundance of plastic could create a greater need for a mobile wallet than any other consumer incentive.

The upscale frozen dessert franchise, Pinkberry, is throwing out its paper punch card for the plastic Pinkcard, a loyalty card tied to the yogurt shop’s mobile app.

The U.S. migration to the EMV secure chip-card standard has been so slow that some have compared it to the country's adoption of the metric system. But after years of delays, the mobile-wallet craze changed the rules.

More financial institutions are working to issue EMV chip cards while merchants are dropping bills to install the proper terminals before certain liability-shift deadlines arrive. But as this transition finally reaches consumers, some may adopt habits that negate the benefits the EMV standard provides.

Target Corp. will begin promoting popular toys with quick response codes labels in its stores, a move that will allow shoppers to use mobile devices to purchase items directly from the aisles.

Google is extending AdWords Business Credit, a product-specific credit card created as an easier way to pay for online advertising campaigns, to the U.K. after testing it for over a year in the U.S.

The LevelUp mobile payment system, best known for providing free incentives to consumers and free payment processing to merchants, picked up 4,000 merchants and 300,000 end users since its July 2011 inception. But with so much being given away for free, is there a future for the startup once its new clients become regulars?

Merchants working with My Clear Reports can now sign up for Automated Clearing House products and services the vendor integrated from Checkgateway.

PayPal was an early supporter of Bump, whose technology could simulate an NFC payment by moving money when users' phones sensed they were being tapped together. But PayPal dropped Bump from its mobile app this year. Where does this leave Bump?

JPMorgan Chase has been busy recently, announcing new rewards cards for AirTran and Hyatt customers.

Travelocity is using software tools from Jumio to accept card payments in its lastminute.com hotel deals app.

Payments industry participants are stepping up to help nonprofits and NGOs improve their ability to collect and distribute donations around the world.

Everyone seems to want the success that Square has in the mobile payments marketplace, and Amazon appears to be the next in line to join the device fray.

The credit card market is stabilizing and continues to grow, according to Equifax’s latest National Consumer Credit Trends Report.

A mobile application being pilot tested by Bank of America lets consumers use their smartphones as payments devices without requiring retailers to install new hardware.

Recent bitcoin thefts may appear to be a security threat that could potentially invalidate the cryptocurrency, but proponents argue that it’s the stability of the digital exchanges where the thefts have occurred that are more at risk.

Virtual terminal provider PayTrace has integrated its transaction processing capabilities with the First Data North network.

The Coopera prepaid Visa card was ranked the fifth most affordable prepaid card by online financial planning website NerdWallet.

As the new iPhone 5 gets into consumers’ hands, so too does Apple’s new limited mobile wallet app, Passbook, a single platform for storing movie tickets, boarding passes, gift cards and retail coupons.