David Heun

In less than six months, MoBank Group has sparked plenty of interest among United Kingdom online retail merchants as they upgrade their websites for mobile commerce.

If Apple Inc. doesn’t include Near Field Communication technology in its next generation of iPhone this fall, the company sure has a stockpile of NFC patents to use at a later date.

In recently announcing plans to bring his mobile payment card reader and software into the U.S. market from the United Kingdom, mPowa CEO Dan Wagner was fairly certain the launch would make competitors such as Square Inc. and Intuit Inc. take notice.

Commuters on New York’s busy Metro-North Railroad won’t have to wait in line to buy train tickets if a mobile-ticketing test taking place this summer proves to be successful for the conductors who check thousands of tickets a day.

Concerned over what amounts to milliseconds, London Underground operators say Near Field Communication-enabled smartphones don’t complete transactions fast enough for its commuters going through ticket turnstiles.

New Jersey and Pennsylvania commuters now may use American Express Co.’s ExpressPay contactless cards to pay for rides on the Port Authority Transit Corp. Speedline rapid-transit system or to park in terminal garages.

The Olympics has long been a showcase for sponsor Visa Inc., but the card brand has much more at stake than usual at the 2012 London Olympics because of the mobile-payment initiative it plans to undertake during the event later this month.

Banks should consider developing their own mobile wallets before mobile-network operators or other nonbank wallet developers lock down the technology and garner most of the consumer attention, analysts and financial advisors generally agree.

If crooks find it too difficult to penetrate fraud-prevention layers protecting online merchants, corporations or bank accounts, they revert to “old-fashioned” fraud methods aimed at easier targets.

British Airways, the United Kingdom’s largest international airline with 600 global destinations, says it will strengthen its protection of payment card data when customers purchase tickets online.

From a historical perspective, payments industry observers know a few things about Apple Inc. It’s not knowing the company’s future plans that have them edgy.

It might not be fair to describe the mobile-payment initiatives in Europe as taking on a “monkey-see, monkey-do” mentality because, after all, competing projects are announced on a regular basis in the U.S. as well.

If a Qualified Security Assessor tests–and passes–a business for payments security compliance, that business may feel it could rest on its laurels.

For years, the payments industry has been waiting for Apple to disrupt the market with a payment-capable iPhone. Some are finally getting sick of the wait.

Consumers may not be pushing for stronger card security because they feel overly protected by the systems in use today. But they do face real costs for fraud.

Preparing systems for the Single Euro Payments Area may be more complex and time-consuming than many European corporations and banks realize. To ease this complexity, SunGard is offering software to centralize payments management.

Mobile devices can be used to add a second factor of authentication for bank accounts, but they can also be an easy factor for fraudsters to misuse.

Nearly all smartphone users in Sweden will soon have access to a mobile payment service called MyWallet if their phones support it.

Deutsche Telekom AG's announcement July 2 of a mobile payments partnership with MasterCard highlights the opportunities for issuers in mobile wallets being developed worldwide, including in the U.S.

When Joe Randazza first began filing National Payment Card Association patents seven years ago for decoupled debit products and processes, he admits he "didn't have the vision to foresee a future with smartphones."