Kuapay has finished a design upgrade and enhancement to its mobile wallet that borrows from the past—consumers see actual images of cards and coupons when looking at the screen

I-Free is offering a number of contactless payment services in Russia, including a mobile wallet that allows the remote issuance and download of mobile MasterCard PayPass cards, transportation fare services and geolocation-based coupons.

Slyce pictures a day when consumers will be able to buy anything depicted in a TV or printed advertisement — or even a product seen in person — by snapping a photo of it with their mobile device.

Mobile payments provider Fortumo Ltd. landed a major European carrier-billing deal last week, less than a month after revealing a significant partnership with Microsoft for mobile payment development on Windows phones.

IP Commerce Inc., a startup backed by Venrock Inc. and Intel Corp.'s venture-capital arm, is shutting its key business, which handles credit-card processing for companies including Groupon Inc., citing competition.

Phillips 66 has joined the retailer-driven Merchant Customer Exchange mobile payments and commerce initiative, the Houston-based gas station chain announced May 23. Phillips 66 also operates Conoco stations. The company joins MCX only two weeks after the mobile payment venture added another petroleum provider, Pacific Convenience & Fuels LLC.

Blaze Mobile is developing a new Near Field Communication mobile phone attachment that attempts to build a more open mobile wallet by allowing consumers to choose from a series of payment accounts.

ZooZ is one several companies building new technology that attempts to improve the integration between marketing and mobile payments.

Square announced expansion into Japan with updated Register features today, after seeing two executives, Alyssa Cutright and Alex Petrov, leave the mobile payments company.

Visa has hired Ryan McInerney to be its president. McInerney, previously the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase's consumer bank, fills a position left vacant since John Partridge retired in March. Visa also appointed Elizabeth Buse and Bill Sheedy to new roles.

Sprint's Boost Mobile prepaid phone service developed a mobile wallet as a way to provide financial services for its underbanked target audience.

EBay Inc. said PayPal will be available in 2 million retail stores this year as it takes on Square Inc. and Intuit Inc. in the market for mobile payments.

Google and Square have entered the notoriously challenging person-to-person payment field, sidestepping one of the major hurdles other companies have faced: signing up new users.

Swipely has secured a $12 million Series B round of financing, which will fund its nationwide expansion, the payments and marketing company announced today.

MasterCard is part of a joint venture that will launch the Zuum mobile payments service this month. The venture is touting Zuum as the first service of its kind in Brazil.

Square, PayPal, Groupon and others recently revealed a flurry of new technology at the point of sale, demonstrating just how capable tablets and smartphones are at handling payments and other needs for small merchants.

The identities of the card processing companies whose systems were breached in a massive cyber offensive have surfaced.

Google is not including a physical payments card as part of its mobile wallet, at least for the immediate future, according to the tech news site allthingsd.com.

Southwest Airlines, Pacific Convenience & Fuels LLC, RaceTrac and Brinker International Inc. have joined the retailer-driven effort to establish a mobile wallet for merchants and consumers, the Irving, Texas-based MCX announced May 9. Brinker is the parent company of Chili’s Grill & Bar and Maggiano’s Little Italy.

Near Field Communication technology has many detractors, yet it continues to advance as a mobile payments instrument. Banks should thus view NFC as an opportunity to ensure they stay relevant to customers' payments, according to a new Celent report.