Technology

The Dan Beard Council of the Boy Scouts of America has begun using a mobile card reader from VeriFone in its Annual Popcorn Sale.

Subprime borrowers are receiving as large a portion of new car loans as they did right before the start of the financial crisis, according to a study by Experian's auto finance research unit.

Square has stolen the spotlight — after convincing Starbucks to switch to Square for processing, the mobile-payments vendor gave other merchants the option to accept cards for a flat $275 monthly fee. How can a rival mobile-pay provider compete?

PreCash Inc., which allows the underbanked to make electronic bill payments and other transactions in cash, says it now allows payments to more than 10,000 billers.

Kilowatt Credit Union of Madison, Wis., has selected First Data for debit processing services. The credit union also joined the Star Network, signing a multiyear agreement under which Star will provide PIN-secured debit point of sale and ATM access to its cardholders.

Wright Express Corp. continues to expand its global presence, acquiring a 51% interest in Unik SA, a privately held provider of payroll cards in Brazil, for approximately $21.9 million.

PayPal and Square allow their mobile-wallet users to pay by checking in at merchant locations with an app that transmits their photo to the merchant for authentication. With ShopKeep POS, PayPal is showcasing this feature at a New York film festival.

A common criticism of daily-deals providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial is that merchants using those services generally don't always receive return visits or sufficient data to use in designing long-term customer-loyalty plans.

SCVNGR's LevelUp, which announced a charitable-donation option today, is not the first to spot a link between charities and mobile spending and rewards. Shopkick's mobile rewards app began life in 2009 as CauseWorld, which had a strong focus on donating any rewards earned to charities.

DeviceFidelity is relaunching its Moneto mobile wallet, and this time around it lets users transfer funds to other Moneto users' prepaid accounts.