Technology

One of the newest location-based payment apps came out of Brett Neese's house on a Friday night.

Cloud-based wallets, QR code wallets and other software-based wallets seem to be shoving Near Field Communication hardware out of the spotlight. But reports of the death of NFC, which enables contactless payments from many mobile devices, have been greatly exaggerated.

Following the lead of other retailers, the National Retail Federation filed an appeal Jan. 2 of a U.S. District Court ruling to approve the years-long class action against the card brands that resulted in a $5.7 billion swipe-fee settlement.

Sandra Braunstein, the director of the Federal Reserve Board's division of consumer and community affairs, plans to retire on April 1, the agency announced Jan. 3.

DoubleBeam, a white-label payments provider, has started the New Year working to fix a bug that crashed the reporting server used by GoPago, which DoubleBeam purchased last month.

E-commerce technology provider Shopify has launched a redesigned version of its iOS mobile app, adding features designed to enable store management and mobile payments.

While most gift cards are still made of plastic, digital cards are increasing in popularity among consumers because of the many options to customize the cards.

Chirpify founder and CEO Chris Teso's five o'clock shadow and plaid shirt identify him as one of the new breed of payments entrepreneurs. His advice to newcomers: be fearless.

Alabama State Employees Credit Union has filed the first class action by a financial services company against Target Corp. over costs from the massive card security data breach.

Google will discontinue Bump and Flock, two file-sharing apps Google acquired when it purchased Bump Technologies last year.