Check, a mobile financial management and bill payment provider, is working with the Desert Water Agency in Palm Springs, Calif., to allow residents to pay their utility bills from its smartphone app.

The Affordable Care Act's individual mandate will hasten individual responsibility for health care procurement and payments, making mobile apps increasingly important.

Mumbai power distributor Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. says it has established the first mobile and Web-based digital option for residents to pay their utility bills.

A mobile security expert in Germany says he found a flaw in the encryption technology of some mobile phone SIM cards holding personal and payment details.

TouchSuite says the cloud is the perfect place for salon owners to operate their point of sale systems.

Eat24.com has developed a new point of sale terminal and restaurant management system it intends to offer for free to help clients handle online food orders.

Adquira and Inetco are attacking payment-processing slowdowns by using cloud-delivered technology to track the performance of individual components of a transaction.

The PayVest event in New York, presented by PaymentsSource, American Banker and NYPAY, brought together many key players in emerging payments and technology. Many of them are taking different paths to the future.

PayPal increased its presence in Australian bars, cafes and restaurants today by securing agreements with hospitality technology companies EatNow, OrderMate and Beat the Q.

Green Dot Corp.'s GoBank account is being featured on Lifetime's Project Runway.

DeviceFidelity, which has spent years supporting hardware-based mobile payment systems with the likes of Visa and MasterCard, is reporting success in devoting more attention to the software-based aspects of its moneto wallet.

In supporting the Square Wallet as a mobile payment option for its customers, U.S. Bank is taking a step that other financial institutions might view as embracing a competitor.

Banks need to have an open mind when evaluating disruptive mobile technologies and the developers behind them, says Sergi Herrero, the vice president of business development, payments and mobile finance at BNP Paribas and CEO of its L'Atelier North America division.

Royal Bank of Canada chose to store data in the cloud, rather than use the mobile phone's secure element, in a mobile payment system it plans to launch this year.

The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) has hired Dekkers Davidson to be its CEO. Davidson was most recently a managing director at Barclaycard US.

Three weeks after completing a mobile payment development agreement with China Mobile, the China UnionPay card brand has signed on eight banks to launch a contactless mobile payment system in Shanghai.

After years of government and telco-backed testing of contactless mobile payments in France, a major bank is ready to provide a significant boost to the country's Near Field Communication project.

PayPal and its parent eBay each expect $20 billion in mobile commerce and payment volume this year, eBay CEO John Donahoe says.

Australian startup Pin Payments has acquired billing technology and the global customer base of a U.S. company to continue its push to provide developers with software that handles credit card acceptance online.

Shopzilla, a technology company that manages a portfolio of shopping, product comparison and coupon websites, is expanding its mobile payments capabilities by acquiring startup Zappli.