When Shae Whitney was selling bitters at farmer's markets for a year and a half, she used Square's mobile card reader to accept payments. But when she opened a retail location with her partner in June, she switched to Groupon's iPad-based point of sale system, Breadcrumb.

Infobip is planning to grow its mobile payments and consulting business in the U.S., betting the robust consumer adoption of mobile technology will create a substantial opportunity for carrier billing.

There has been an avalanche of new mobile technology in just the past few weeks. The iPhone 5s, Samsung Galaxy Gear and Google Moto X bring with them a wide range of new systems for payments — and companies like PayPal and Fiserv are making noise with new products of their own.

The developers who have an early look at Apple's new iOS7 operating system have found it supports the use of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), a wireless technology that some consider a longer-range alternative to Near Field Communication (NFC).

As banks desperately try to lower their risk at the point of sale, a San Jose startup is working to create a device ID and authentication scheme that it hopes will eventually reduce fraud.

Payment processor Cynergy is getting into the mobile point of sale game, hoping its existing mix of merchant services and mobile technology will capture attention in a crowded market.

MCX, a retailer-driven mobile commerce initiative, is being steadily built upon retailers' desire to control their own customer data and possibly lessen the sting of, or bypass totally, card payment interchange fees. But it must still deliver two key things: a brand and a product.

MagicBand, a system that Walt Disney Co. has been testing all year with a limited number of employees and Walt Disney World resort patrons, seems to be poised for success based on what looks like an extreme level of commitment to it — so far.

Atlanta, Ga.-based Cardlytics Inc. plans to support location-based card-linked marketing with push notifications in the first quarter of 2014.

By adding Popmoney person-to-person payments to its primary mobile banking application, PNC Bank is putting the feature where its most tech-savvy customers expect to see it.

Fiserv will expand Instant Payments to the mobile version of its Popmoney person-to-person payment system in November.

MasterCard is placing more emphasis on things like airline boarding, wearable computing and many other things the card network contends can be used to win a consumer's business long before the payment is made.

Versafe doesn't trust consumers to take the necessary precautions to protect their devices. So the company built a fraud protection layer within its banking application to take matters out of users' hands.

Core Innovation Capital, the investment partner of the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), has made an investment in Wipit Inc., a mobile payments company focused on unbanked consumers.

HealthcarePays (HCP), a member-owned payment network, has partnered with technology developer StoneEagle to sell an electronic payments system.

DoubleBeam is using electronic checks in its mobile payment system to cut merchants' costs on interchange.

Bank technology vendor Yodlee has a new mobile and Web app called Tandem that allows consumers to manage their personal relationships and the financial obligations that go along with those relationships.

The Societe de transport de Montreal (STM) is testing a loyalty program that ties user preferences and special offers to transit payment cards, a move that's also designed to shift rider volume from peak times.

MasterCard Inc. and a major wireless carrier in the Netherlands will join three Dutch banks in reviving a Near Field Communication-based mobile payment test that was nearly three years in the making.

PayWith's digital wallet can allow any merchant that accepts MasterCard to also accept mobile payments without buying new hardware.