Credit

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.

U.S. Bank in Minneapolis has committed to becoming the first large U.S. bank to offer mobile bill payment in the manner of mobile check deposit—letting users pay a bill by simply taking a picture of it with the camera on their smartphone or tablet.

Online payments provider Optimal Payments Ltd. established the foundation for expanding its payment gateways to U.S. merchants and prepaid business in Europe with separate deals announced this week.

Passengers on US Airways flights can now purchase food and beverages with a tap of their credit card.

Discover Financial Services said that its board has approved a change in the company’s fiscal yearend from Nov. 30 to Dec. 31 of each year.

American Express chief executive Ken Chenault says the company’s new Bluebird prepaid card is off to a promising start.

Before the mobile card reader phenomenon took off, it was unlikely that a small-business owner could walk into a nearby store, pay $10 and walk out minutes later with the ability to accept card payments. Today, mobile payment devices are competing for shelf space with a growing number of major retailers.

Greenwich Associates announced Monday it has agreed to acquire Javelin Strategy & Research for its work in mobile and multichannel banking, payments, security and fraud, among other expertise.

As growth in the credit card industry has stalled nationally, a group of small issuers have kept their foot on the gas.

Isis, mobile-pay venture formed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, has signed two deals that would allow consumers to use its Near Field Communication-based mobile wallet at vending machines that accept cashless payments.

Banks have at times been urged to design their own wallets instead of working with third parties — but going it alone may not always be the best approach.