David Heun

By entering a partnership to develop new mobile money platforms with global wireless carrier Telefónica, Monitise Plc is expanding the reach of its mobile payments and banking technology beyond financial institutions and traditional payments companies.

The "nuclear football" allows the president to order a nuclear missile attack from any location, and ZenithSecure took its idea for a new data security vault straight from the playbook for protecting those launch codes.

Members of the EMV Migration Forum are recommending a single common debit code for EMV transactions in the U.S. and plan to provide details later this summer for how the payments industry can implement it.

Merchants are expressing concern about the U.S. transition to EMV-chip payment cards because of what they view as technical challenges and industry politics.

Boston-based global payment processor peerTransfer has raised $6.4 million from investors as it seeks to expand its payments services beyond the education industry.

Season ticket holders of the Washington Nationals professional baseball team will soon pay for concessions and souvenirs with the same smart card they use to enter Nationals Park.

RuPay debit cardholders in India can now use their cards to make online purchases, using Acculynk's PaySecure online PIN pad authentication.

Barclays has introduced a new feature on its Pingit person-to-person money transfer application that brings retailers in the U.K. into the mobile payments fold.

The advance of smart cards, mobile and cloud-based payments all promise one thing: better security. But in many cases, they rely on the same vulnerable hardware at the point of sale.

Ingenico SA will provide the contactless payment terminals that Banco Nacional de Mexico, or Banamex, plans to make available for up to 30,000 retailers in Mexico.

The Metrolink rail system in Southern California is offering commuters a "smart" paper ticket as part of the transit access pass, or TAP, smart card system operating on Los Angeles buses and trains since 2007.

MasterCard has named Gilberto Caldart as the president of its Latin America and Caribbean business, succeeding Richard Hartzell, who takes on a new role as head of MasterCard's business with merchants and acquirers across international markets.

Prepaid card fees are often considered unreasonably high, but that is rarely the case — even the ill-fated Kardashian Kard, which was so vilified for its fees that it shut down within a month of its launch, wasn't out of line in its pricing.

Stockholm-based iZettle is bringing its mobile card reader into Mexico.

U.K.-based Spire Payments has hired Nick Parsons as its managing director of Northern European activities, the payments hardware provider announced June 18.

Online restaurant reservation provider OpenTable Inc. has acquired mobile payment startup JustChalo Inc. for $11 million.

In the U.S., the only country converting to the EMV chip-card format with more than one debit network and a federal mandate that covers debit routing, the lingering uncertainty about how to code EMV payments “is pushing away many issuers and forcing them to wait” before offering cards, says Thomas Grouard Lillelund, senior manager of EMV and new technologies for CPI Card Group.

MasterCard Inc. and telco VimpelCom Ltd. are testing a Near Field Communication-based mobile payments service at a Russian bank.

Eight months after giving the Project Oscar mobile commerce initiative a new name — Weve — and a new mission in the U.K., the telco joint venture has given its first hints of launching a Near Field Communication mobile payments service.

Banks providing cash back on transactions as an incentive for credit card use have a better chance of seeing their account become the "top of wallet" card, a new Auriemma Consulting Group report says.