John Adams

The next big idea for payments is ready to spring to life, and MasterCard wants to be there when it happens.

Mobile transaction technology provider C-Sam has hired former Citigroup executive Kurt Weiss as managing director of global financial institutions and mPayy founder Conrad Sheehan to be general manager of strategic initiatives.

Merchant payment and marketing company Punchey has hired Michael Sattler to be vice president of engineering and Rick Graham as director of demand generation.

The mobile bank account provider Simple will soon offer Braintree's mobile payment system, Venmo Touch, to its users.

BBVA Ventures, the corporate venture arm of BBVA Group, is investing in SumUp, a company that enables mobile devices to accept card payments.

Ferhan Patel has become the chief compliance officer for Payza, an online payments and electronic wallet provider.

One Hour Translation, which touts its expertise at translating documents from over 70 languages, is no expert at translating payments across different currencies. For that, it needed help from BlueSnap.

Credit bureau and payments data company Equifax has acquired TrustedID, a company that offers identity and privacy protection products.

The payments processor Total System Services has signed an agreement with KBC Bank Ireland to launch the bank's debit card portfolio in Ireland.

LevelUp founder Seth Priebatsch could barely contain his excitement when discussing the possibilities of Google Glass, a mobile device built into a headset that Google sells only to a limited number of early adopters.

Intuit's decision to shed its digital banking division demonstrates the technology developer's position that banks aren’t the only way to marry merchant services with consumer mobile payments.

The Chicago Transit Authority is planning an August launch for its new fare system that will allow retail and fare payments from the same card.The open standards fare system is called Ventra and was developed through a partnership between Cubic Transportation Systems, MasterCard and First Data. With it, Chicago transit riders can pay for fares on the city's elevated trains (called the "L"), buses and subway that are all operated by the CTA, as well as suburban bus line fares for routes operated by a separate transit authority called Pace.

Western Union and Commercial Bank of Dubai will launch a co-branded prepaid payroll card in the United Arab Emirates.

Mobile and online payment network RentMoola has partnered with Landlord Web Solutions to offer Web and mobile payments to property managers in Canada.

Chunghwa Telecom has hired Gemalto to secure its Near Field Communication payments program. CHT, Taiwan’s largest mobile operator with 10 million subscribers, will use Gemalto’s UpTeq NFC SIM-embedded software to protect contactless payments. Gemalto’s product also enables CHT to deploy and manage additional NFC services.

LevelUp will integrate its loyalty and mobile payment technology into the pcAmerica Restaurant Pro Express and Cash Register Express point of sale systems.

Advertising industry payments have become challenging to manage, as expanding media outlets create diverse cash flows between clients, ad agencies and media outlets.That complexity is driving a partnership between AnchorOps, a company that partners with advertising and media agencies to provide electronic payments, audits, reconciliation and software development and Wex, a provider of corporate payment products. The two companies have launched AnchorOps ePay, which customizes payments for advertising and media buying agencies.

Virtual Piggy, the parent-controlled money management platform for children, added an experienced mobile banking designer as its new creative director of mobile design.

Innovation to Commerce Inc., a cloud-based payments processor, will power prepaid card programs for DMS Banks & Trust Ltd., a Cayman Islands bank that provides offshore financial services.

Total System Services closed its $1.4 billion acquisition of NetSpend on July 1, in line with its previously disclosed schedule for closing.