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Twitter's immense popularity has caught the attention of many established payment companies and entrepreneurs. Several have attempted to turn the microblogging service into a payment channel, but so far there are few success stories.

As more retailers begin using quick-response (QR) codes for mobile payments at the checkout line, Bank of America is introducing the codes at the teller line.

The executive shuffle is ramping up at Visa. The payments company announced Dec. 12 that John Partridge will retire as the company’s president at the end of March.

The processor Total System Services Inc. announced multi-year agreements with two credit unions.

With more plastic in circulation than any other payment network — 2.9 billion cards, or 45 percent of the world’s total last year — UnionPay is now accepted in 135 countries. Its rise is causing friction as the firm grabs market share from Visa Inc. as well as MasterCard Inc., which UnionPay surpassed in customer spending in the first half of the year.

Home Depot Inc. and other retailers lost their bid to appeal a judge’s preliminary approval of Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc.’s proposed $7.25 billion settlement of a merchant fee price-fixing case.

MasterCard is confident that the proposed $7.25 billion settlement of allegations that it and Visa engaged in merchant fee price fixing will receive final approval, according to Nomura analysts who recent met with key executives of the card network.

Intuit's 2012 New Year resolution for its GoPayment card reader was to take it around the world. It did so in bookend fashion.

Like many New Year's resolutions, this one got off to a great start and then languished. Intuit started the year by offering its GoPayment reader in Canada. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company's next significant international expansion was last week's push into the UK market with a pilot program called Intuit Pay.

Cheap travel and social media continue to connect people all over the world. Companies focusing on e-commerce and payments gateways could see success as the world becomes more globalized by helping merchants handle payments from those who want to spend beyond their borders.

Square and Lemon, two companies that offer mobile wallets on Apple's iPhone handsets, have updated their apps to work with Apple's Passbook wallet.

Square, the mobile-payments startup founded by Jack Dorsey, is giving small merchants the ability to sell gift cards to shoppers on the go, stepping up competition with eBay’s PayPal business.

As banks dig deeper into mobile commerce, they’ll likely bump into industries like telecom and device manufacturing, where the development cycles and patent fights come much faster.

If large retailers felt a need to create their own mobile commerce brand through the Merchant Customer Exchange to lessen customer confusion and control transaction data, then smaller retailers must also feel overwhelmed with all of the mobile payment and commerce choices available.Starting Dec. 10, San Francisco-based CardFree hopes to address that problem as a new company helping merchants develop their own custom-branded mobile commerce tools.

More than half of consumers in seven technology-advanced countries say they are interested in mobile payments. But the U.S. doesn’t crack the list of the top four countries in which residents say they’d consider replacing their plastic payment cards with mobile phones.

Sotheby’s is auctioning off a prototype of the first magnetic credit card. It’s not as impressive as you might think.

Chris Larsen, who disrupted consumer finance in the 1990s and 2000s with E-Loan and Prosper, is seeking to shake up the industry again with Ripple, a peer-to-peer payment and credit system.

Apple introduced its Passbook app — a wallet that stores other mobile wallets — alongside the iPhone 5 in September. Three months later, has Passbook revolutionized mobile payments? Or is it starving from lack of support?

Consumers can turn to a growing number of companies for financial products these days, but as Jamie Moldafsky sees it, everything comes back to relationship building—which Wells Fargo hopes will benefit from peer-to-peer payments and mobile technology.

Barcelona residents not yet conducting tap-and-go payments at merchant point of sale may soon find it easier to do so using their mobile phones.La Caixa continued its push to make contactless payments the accepted norm in Barcelona, announcing plans to issue up to 200,000 Tap Visa stickers that consumers can attach to the backs of their mobile phones.

If prepaid card providers want to be taken seriously, please, please, please ditch your celebrity partners.