The telco-led mobile wallet venture Softcard has laid off 60 employees and is consolidating its offices, a sign that the company's staffing may have been oversized compared to its opportunities in the market.

PayPal is enabling monthly installment for larger purchases and offering business consulting, a move that will allow the company to handle larger transactions and extend its merchant services.

The San Jose-based payment terminal maker Verifone launched a new mobile operating system and is separately working with Samsung on new mobile point of sale projects.

Global payment solutions provider Elavon has partnered with Verizon to bring mobile point of sale products to Verizon's small-business customers.

Tritium Partners has acquired a majority stake in Giact Systems LLC, an electric payments service.

French payment companies are stepping up the use technology that can spot certain types of card fraud that are not prevented by EMV-chip security.

The extended leave of Starbucks' chief operating officer, Troy Alstead, could indicate that last year's creation of the COO post has succeeded in furthering the coffee chain's mobile payments initiatives.

Apple Pay will expand to Canada this year, according to a report by 9to5Mac, a news site that follows Apple's activities.

Nine Polish banks are pushing ahead with the country's mobile payment efforts, promising to launch a Visa-backed, cloud-based contactless service early this year.

One of the clearest things that sets Apple Pay apart from other mobile wallets is its incorporation of Touch ID fingerprint recognition. Now that Apple has opened up Touch ID to outside developers, the fingerprint tech is spreading throughout — and in some cases beyond — Apple's ecosystem.

Starbucks Corp. Chief Operating Officer Troy Alstead will go on an extended unpaid hiatus, leaving the world’s largest coffee-shop chain without a No. 2 to Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz.

The earliest implementations of the 3D Secure e-commerce system amounted to a password for consumers' payment cards and a link between consumer and card issuer — an idea that is growing stale in a world where consumers are able to authenticate payments with more sophisticated tech.

PayPal's mobile payments application can now be accessed by BlackBerry users in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, with plans for more markets later on.

Skrill, an e-commerce provider based in New York, plans to offer its digital wallet as a payment option in Second Life, the once-popular virtual world game that was released in 2003.

Wirecard, a digital payments company based in Germany, has partnered with Five by Five, a software provider in Croatia, to provide mobile point of sale technology to small businesses.

A Helsinki, Finland-based startup is hoping to knock down one of the barriers to credit-card acceptance in developing countries: a lack of reliable Internet access.

Biometric security has become a hot topic in the payments industry with many experts lauding its convenience and effectiveness. But there's no consensus on whether to store biometric data locally or in the cloud.

Apple's reputation as a negotiator is rather simple—it doesn't negotiate. But Strategic Resource Management, a negotiation company with 200 clients in financial services, contends issuers and merchants have a chance to win more favorable terms with Apple.

High-tech cards have struggled to gain traction as a distinct, offline — and often expensive — consumer gadget for storing and protecting multiple payment accounts. But the pervasiveness of Internet access points and Internet-connected devices could give some of these gadgets fresh appeal.

EBay Inc. named Bonnie Hammer, chairman of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment, to its board as the 10th independent director, bringing in an executive with a background in consumer and social-media content.