Cards

Google Wallet is under increasing pressure — though the mobile wallet has been in consumers' hands for over a year, Google still has fewer issuer partners than its rival Isis, and with the Merchant Customer Exchange wallet on the horizon, Google now faces competition from the very retailers it seeks to attract.

A payments technology provider is enabling acquirers, independent sales organizations and agents to offer a prepaid MasterCard to their merchant customers and share with them a portion of each purchase.

AT&T has agreed to sell Square's smartphone-based card readers in its 1,000 company-owned retail stores.

Adding payment acceptance to a website could be as easy as embedding a YouTube video or sharing a link on Facebook.

Consumers want their bank to provide them their first mobile wallet because of their trust in the institution. But, at least in the UK, no wallet provider has thus far addressed all of consumers' concerns with mobile payments, new research shows.

Apple's iWallet is much anticipated but, due to Apple's notorious secrecy, still very hard to picture. A new patent lends some slight clarity to the company's mobile-payment vision.

Isis, the mobile-payment joint venture backed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, is on track for a debut in September, following months of delays and a change in strategy last year.

With their "Project Oscar" mobile payment joint venture remaining uncertain because of a regulator's investigations, major European telcos are turning to traditional payment companies to get back in the mobile payments game. MasterCard's new five-year agreement with Everything Everywhere is a case in point.

USA Technologies has added a Web service called QuickConnect, which helps developers and original equipment manufacturers use the vendor's ePort Connect platform for accepting card payments.

MasterCard continued to expand its partnerships with European telcos, announcing an exclusive, five-year agreement with Everything Everywhere to develop mobile and digital payment applications.

Prospects for the Visa/MasterCard antitrust settlement received another jolt last week when the Retail Industry Leaders Association weighed in against the terms, joining other influential opponents of the landmark deal.

WASHINGTON – Prospects for the Visa/MasterCard antitrust settlement received another jolt last week when the Retail Industry Leaders Association weighed in against the terms, joining other influential opponents of the landmark deal.

Small business owners in Europe certainly won't have a shortage of mobile payment options to choose from, as more companies enter the market locally and from the U.S.

Just as the plastic card liberated many consumers from a reliance on cash and coin, alternative payment sources are gaining enough adoption to steal transactions from plastic — with a little help from the very companies these digital currencies threaten.

JPMorgan Chase has outbid its competitors to snag about a third of the ATMs, the most of any financial institution, located at the busiest airport in New England.

It took 11 minutes, tops, after I pushed the button for the equivalent of $5 to travel across the Atlantic. For this service I paid less than a penny. There were no banks involved. If there had been, it would have cost me at least twice the amount I was sending.

Payments-industry rivals sometimes put their differences aside to achieve a common goal.

Live Gamer Inc. has typically provided virtual currency services to video game developers, but as Nevada prepares to let casinos take their high-stakes games online, the vendor is betting that its expertise will prove valuable when the games put real cash at stake.

All eyes have been on Square this month with its investment from Starbucks and its new pricing option, but Intuit says it still has an advantage in mobile payments that Square can't match.

Some experts question whether the United States can meet the deadlines the card brands have set for converting to the EMV chip-card standard from magnetic-stripe cards.