Credit

Cards for Discover Financial Services will be issued in Europe for the first time through an expanded partnership between the credit card company and Russian Standard Bank.

Online marketplace Etsy is putting more marketing muscle behind its PayPal alternative, Direct Checkout, as it waives processing fees this month and makes Direct Checkout a requirement for accepting its virtual gift cards, which launch next month.

The Dan Beard Council of the Boy Scouts of America has begun using a mobile card reader from VeriFone in its Annual Popcorn Sale.

Awareness of contactless card payments in the UK has nearly doubled in the past year, resulting in more than a million payments per month, according to research that provides plenty of food for thought for the U.S. and other countries where such cards are available.

Square has stolen the spotlight — after convincing Starbucks to switch to Square for processing, the mobile-payments vendor gave other merchants the option to accept cards for a flat $275 monthly fee. How can a rival mobile-pay provider compete?

A common criticism of daily-deals providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial is that merchants using those services generally don't always receive return visits or sufficient data to use in designing long-term customer-loyalty plans.

VeriFone is making good on its original promise to open up its Square-like mobile card reader, Sail, to developers.

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.

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.

The rate at which lenders declare credit card loans uncollectible ticked up at four of the six largest issuers in July from the previous month.

The number of open retail credit card accounts in the U.S. has reached heights not seen since the end of 2009.

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.