Technology

Payments played a major role in the 2014 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Here are some of the biggest announcements that came out during the conference, and a few from just before or afterwards that were no less important to the mobile payments community.

Square has reportedly delayed an initial public offering, which gives the company a chance to build more services that position it for sustainable growth in the future, according to payments consultant Richard Crone.

Isis expects a lot of banks will leverage host card emulation (HCE) to build their own mobile wallets, though the telecom-led mobile payments scheme also hopes the technology will add breadth to its own service.

Cellum, a mobile commerce provider, has integrated MasterCard's MasterPass digital wallet with its own mobile wallet offering, OTPay, making it the first third-party in Europe to integrate MasterPass.

As banks continue to study the use of host card emulation (HCE) for Near Field Communication-based mobile payments, Ukraine's PrivatBank says it is one of the first to publicly launch an HCE service.

Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest Bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy in Japan, focusing attention on the digital currency’s risks.

Target's profit fell nearly 50 percent in its fourth fiscal quarter and declined by more than a third for all of 2013, the retailer reports, damage likely the result of the credit card data breach that compromised information on as many as 110 million customers.

NakedWines' website, featuring a pastoral northern California winery, looks calm and comforting. But the company, which uses a crowdfunding payments model to reduce steps in wine sales, is trying to stir up some chaos.

Visa has developed a new service that aims to reduce prepaid card fraud.

TSYS has renewed an agreement Missouri-based Commerce Bank to handle its credit and signature debit cards, adding PIN debit services as well.