David Heun

Walgreen Co.'s new Balance Financial Prepaid MasterCard will be at the core of a series of financial services the retailer plans to offer over the next few months.

London-based Proxama Plc will help mobile payment venture Isis develop its mobile wallet app for use on Blackberry 10 devices.

First Data's OfferWise platform, which allows consumers to obtain discounts linked to a pre-enrolled payment card, is now linked to Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Tyfone Inc. has added Acculynk’s Payzur person-to-person payment capability to the mobile banking application it supports at Boulder Valley Credit Union.

Nearly a year after making its mobile card reader available in Canada, Square Inc. has decided to locate a permanent office in the country.

South Korean mobile payment provider Danal will partner with biometric technology provider Crucialtec to develop an app for mobile payments in South Korea, and eventually in China and the U.S.

Mobile commerce provider CashStar Inc. has named Ben Kaplan as its new president and CEO.

MasterCard has become the first payment network to join the Fast IDentity Online Alliance, which aims to improve online payment security through the use of common technology across browsers, applications and servers.

Online payment provider BlueSnap will provide its global payments gateway software to Voxy, a New York-based company that offers language-learning courses online and through smartphones.

The only way for the payments industry to thwart future hackers is to create a system that can adapt quickly to unanticipated threats – but many companies still struggle with the costs of handling their basic security needs.

The original iPhone revolutionized consumer technology and breathed life into the market for mobile payments — but the newest iPhone's most futuristic feature may signal a growing problem for banks and card networks.

Bad guys are very good at sharing technology and systems that work with other criminal networks — and payments companies can suffer if they embrace the same technology without realizing how it is being exploited.

The payments industry has a significant security challenge on its hands as too many consumers become "chronic oversharers" of their personal and payment card data, says Ellen Richey, chief enterprise risk officer for Visa Inc.

Visa plans to include more data in its advanced authorization technology to better protect banks' gas station clients.

The PCI council continues to expand its reach, with the intent of remaining a strong guide for data security well into the future.

Building on a new mobile payment gateway that MasterCard developed for Egypt, an Egyptian bank last week launched the Phone Cash mobile wallet for consumers.

The various stakeholders in the U.S. payments system may need to put their differences aside to stay relevant as technology advances. But whether wide-scale collaboration is practical — or even possible — is open to debate.

Terrorists have put a bulls-eye on the U.S. financial system, including payments infrastructure, as a target that fits in with their plans to cripple the country's economy, says Juan C. Zarate, senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The assault on cash in India will continue through a new wallet offering from Mobikwik.

Corethree Ltd. has added Barclays' Pingit mobile checkout option to its mobile wallet for transportation services.