Technology

Accepting payments on the go is taxing enough without having to worry about the government's cut. To address this pain point, Intuit added a geolocation feature to its GoPayment mobile card reader to determine where a payment is being accepted and apply the appropriate tax rate.

The payment processor Planet Payment said May 23 that it purchased Branded Payment Solutions, an Irish payments company.

Payments innovations frequently seem to come about from situations where people worry they might not have enough cash on hand for a tip. Years ago, taxis added card readers in part to address this issue, and today, parking valets are experimenting with something similar.

Mobile payment development may be held back by the unnecessary confusion surrounding mobile wallet security and standards, according to a top MasterCard executive.

Target has once again proven to be a breeding ground for payment innovation. The retail giant, which gave an early boost to the Starbucks mobile payment app and the American Express low-fee prepaid card, has given shopkick the go-ahead for a nationwide rollout of the vendor's mobile rewards system at its stores.

Vantiv is offering Ingenico's new point of sale products in an effort to prepare the industry for the EMV chip-card standard and Near Field Communication technology.

Tokenization, a security technique that eliminates card data from merchant systems, provides a clear benefit to merchants but can be difficult to manage without the support of a processor.

U.S. Bancorp is using technology from Fiserv to offer an iPad banking app with a heavy focus on payments.

Zynga's social games — especially its hit Facebook game FarmVille — are a big deal in digital payments. Its games are the key to the success of Facebook Credits, and they may provide a similar boost to American Express' Serve.

Online merchants are dealing with hundreds of thousands of fraud attempts each day, but they say the various fraud-prevention tools at their disposal are helping them fight off the attacks.