John Adams

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has launched a new user interface for Works, the institution's online program management tool for commercial card clients in the U.S. and Canada.

Despite the abundance of portable card readers, the sales pitch is often the same: it's for babysitters, gardeners, flea market sellers and other small merchants. Payleven says the market can be much bigger.

Elavon and Banco Santander confirmed their plan to launch a joint venture to provide merchant services in Spain.

MoonClerk is a new company that's targeting a distinct segment of the payments technology market—the startups and small businesses that want to build a Web payment acceptance engine, but don't have the right tech expertise in-house.

A dramatic dip in the value of Bitcoin is not fallout from a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, said Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in a Facebook post overnight Wednesday. But there was indeed a DDOS attack.

Mobile payment provider Payleven is adding two new features to lure larger businesses—the ability to manage multiple chip-and-PIN card readers from a single master account and support for both mobile and stationary printer systems.

FamZoo says its bundled prepaid cards and online dashboard work as teaching tools, which can bridge a knowledge gap about payments and budgets, particularly among young people.

Twitter on Wednesday abruptly shut down a new product from Ribbon that allows people to make purchases without leaving Twitter’s site.

PayPal legal foe PayOne has received a U.S. Patent for its PayConnect technology, “instant wallet” capability and intellectual property serving the mobile commerce and digital payment market.

PayAnywhere has added more stores to the list of retailers that sell its mobile acceptance technology.

MoneyGram and First National Bank have launched their first mobile money transfer service in Africa, enabling FNB account holders to send and receive international transfers via mobile devices.

Virtual Piggy has two major challenges as mobile commerce expands. The youth-focused alternative payments provider has to tackle the generation gap between its users and the parents that supervise transactions, and it must maintain consistency between digital channels.

Mobile payment technology at restaurants is gaining favor with wait staff, who find shedding paper leads to quicker orders, faster service and higher gratuities.

Hip hop mogul Russell Simmons' prepaid card company UniRush is working with prepaid issuer Green Dot Corp. to offer the RushCard Live Reloadable Prepaid Visa Card.

TransCard and FamZoo will jointly develop United Family Banking, an educational prepaid card designed for families.

McDonalds' foray into mobile debit in Canada is helping spark a national expansion that includes broader adoption of the technology by issuers and merchants.

PXT Payments, which operates the mobile payments and rewards app "looped in," is partnering with Boston College-based startup Jebbit for a student-focused marketing program that combines mobile payments and gaming.

The Canadian government has hired BMO to provide integrated travel and expense management services, in partnership with MasterCard and corporate services provider HRG.

The ongoing adoption of the EMV chip-card standard in the U.S. means credit and debit card issuers will have to consider new factors to offer the cards at their branches.

Independent sales organization Calpian says its Indian unit's Money-on-Mobile service surpassed 130,000 retail locations at the end of March, up from 126,000 at the end of February.