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Issuers are finding more and more sophisticated ways to entice consumers to swipe their cards over those of their rival banks.

Google says use of its mobile wallet app has more than doubled since it modified Google Wallet to more easily allow consumers to link their credit and debit cards.

Apple has — yet again — left payments out when it designed its newest iPhone, despite numerous indications that it explored using Near Field Communication technology to create a mobile wallet. Apple had many good reasons to choose the course it did.

The medical marijuana market once represented a new opportunity for merchant processors, but it dried up almost overnight when the major U.S. credit card networks more or less banned them from processing such sales — even in states where it is legal.

Isis, the mobile-payment venture backed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, won't debut by the end of September as planned, extending delays for a service once expected to start by the end of June.

Barclaycard US says it will work with Google to support the Google Wallet mobile payment system.

Each time the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council felt it was ready to establish a written-in-stone requirement for securing mobile payments, the technology — and the fraud committed against it — changed.

American card issuers and acquirers are "dragging their feet" on the transition to the EMV chip card standard, but some companies hope to speed the transition by making a clear business case for the technology.

Dynamics, a provider of payment cards that can dynamically rewrite their magnetic stripes or smart chips, unveiled another variant of its design this week.

The Near Field Communication chip used in many mobile wallets was conspicuous by its absence during Apple Inc.'s unveiling of the iPhone 5.

ShopKeep POS, a small independent sales organization, is capturing the attention of companies big and small. Earlier this month, it worked with PayPal to test a mobile-payment system, and today it announced plans with Dwolla and SCVNGR's LevelUp.

Fair Isaac has completed its $115-million acquisition of Adeptra, a privately held company that provides technology for reducing fraud and credit risk.

BitPay, an Orlando-based company that helps online merchants accept the digital currency, says more than 1,000 merchants have signed up for its service in the past year.

Online Resources Corp. opened an office in the metro Atlanta area this year to attract the sort of payments-industry talent it says is rarer in Chantilly, Va., where it is based.

The National Retail Federation said it will try to block a settlement of as much as $7.25 billion with Visa and MasterCard over the fees they charge shops when customers pay with credit cards.

Despite the decisions by some of the leading mobile-payment providers to work within the existing infrastructure, investors are concerned that legacy players' operations soon might become obsolete. And VeriFone is serving as their poster child.

Branch staff may provide credit and debit cards right away to customers under a new instant-issuance service from Fiserv.

Banks and credit unions that have watched from the sidelines as the likes of Square, PayPal and Intuit built a mobile-payments market from scratch now have their own product to offer — a product merchants can't get off a retail-store shelf or from an independent sales organization.

Advanced encryption methods, mobile payment security and various other technologies figure to be major topics once again when the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council's participants meet this week.

Discover is pushing aggressively to be at the heart of many mobile-payments initiatives. It's doing a lot that its rivals are not — but there are a few ways it might lose ground.