Joe Bush

In the immediate aftermath of the superstorm Sandy, prepaid cards were summoned to help even though the products have spotty track record in times of extreme need.

Several mobile wallets rely on Near Field Communication technology to make contactless payments at the point of sale, and while the availability of NFC in phones is growing, the tech might need a bigger push to reach ubiquity.

The torrid pace of innovation in the financial industry, especially in the mobile-payment sector, brings problems as well as opportunity. One of those problems is patent issues.

Manilla, which allows consumers to manage bills and subscriptions from an online hub, has an indirect connection to the payments world, but its most recent financial-institution partnership strengthens its relevance to the industry.

Visa and Chexar Networks are testing a mobile application that allows prepaid card users from multiple issuers to remotely deposit checks to their Visa prepaid accounts.

My Clear Reports is adding a mobile application to the virtual business center it offers to merchants and independent sales organizations.

ReadyForZero is one of many companies that provide personal financial management tools to help consumers get a grip on their finances by letting them collect spending data from multiple accounts. Many of these providers do not allow payments, largely out of security concerns.

Debit-card use grew over 2011 and 2010 for straightforward reasons: consumers wanted to reduce credit card debt and more merchants are willing to accept debit cards for small transactions.

Square, in an effort to boost the appeal of its Register app for merchants, is offering a new perk: marketing space on its own website.

Social media-based payments technology continues to gain traction as processing provider E2E Payments announced it will include social payment startup Buyvite as one of the payment options in its network, alongside traditional credit card, virtual terminals, mobile and other payments products.

In an examination of 3.4 million four-digit passwords, the tech consultancy DataGenetics determined that users choose the PIN "1234" nearly 11% of the time.

Although hospitality-focused mobile payment application developer Tabbedout's technology has some resemblance to Square's mobile wallet, the vendor says it designed its system to be more compatible with established payment systems.

The major banks have already committed to e-payment systems like clearXchange and Fiserv's Popmoney, but that doesn’t matter to PaidThx — its system does not rely on bank participation, and will eventually be marketed to the underbanked.

Online Resources Corp. opened an office in the metro Atlanta area this year to attract the sort of payments-industry talent it says is rarer in Chantilly, Va., where it is based.

Credit unions are trying to join the prepaid card phenomenon by providing members lower fees than banks charge.

The Bitcoin system is preparing to join the many digital payment options that fall back on a prepaid card — but is a plastic card even necessary for e-wallets supported by Bitcoin, PayPal, Amex and others?

Live Gamer Inc. has typically provided virtual currency services to video game developers, but as Nevada prepares to let casinos take their high-stakes games online, the vendor is betting that its expertise will prove valuable when the games put real cash at stake.

As a new partner for PayPal, an early partner for Isis and the first issuer to sign on to a new method of participating with Google Wallet, Discover Financial Services is establishing itself as a foundation for mobile payments initiatives.

As the demand for reloadable prepaid cards grows, distribution is expanding further beyond traditional venues such as convenience stores as more companies sell the cards next to long-established financial services such as funds transfers.

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) adds burdens for any company that works with minors online, but it also adds opportunities for payment companies, which already vet their users extensively.