China is gearing up to form a new national mobile payment standard to streamline technology for operators and users, as well as optimize existing resources in the sector.

CHICAGO—Consumers will decide which mobile wallets they want to use and that is why financial institutions should participate in as many as possible, a Citigroup Inc. executive on Oct. 12 told attendees here at the BAI Retail Delivery conference.

Staking out its place in what may become a new competitive front in the ATM industry, NCR Corp. has inked a partnership with PayPal Inc. enabling person-to-person payments through ATMs, the company announced Oct. 12.

In a move that could speed up investors’ market moves, Airtel Ghana Ltd. has announced it is offering a new mobile funds-transfer service in collaboration with Databank Financial Services Ltd., a local stock-trading portal.

In a move that MasterCard Worldwide says is helping to pave the way for contactless mobile payments in the U.S., the card company on Oct. 7 announced that 7,000 Subway restaurants will accept PayPass by the end of the first quarter of 2012. Subway follows McDonald’s Corp., which began taking PayPass in 2004 at its U.S. locations.

A Toronto-based payments gateway is providing consumers with a simpler way to make online purchases from mobile phones, and it is looking for independent sales organizations to promote the product to merchants.

Bank of America Corp., whose website has been down sporadically since Sept. 30, says the problem stemmed from technical hiccups, not a hack attack.

Mocapay Inc. has signed yogurt store Yumilicious to its mobile loyalty program in a move some observers say illustrates the future for loyalty and prepaid gift cards.

Steve Jobs spent his career more focused on personal computing than on personal banking, but under him Apple Computer still left a lasting mark on the world of finance.

On its sixth day of intermittent website outages that began on Friday, Bank of America Corp. acknowledged its website troubles but would not cite the cause.

A regional rural bank in India on Sept. 29 launched a trial to test a new mobile-based version of India’s Kisan credit card, which farmers use to buy equipment and products such as fertilizer and seeds at a lower interest rate.

New regulations that are sweeping across the banking industry, particularly the Durbin amendment to the Dodd/Frank Act, have financial institutions and other card issuers scrambling to find alternative ways to boost fee income as traditional revenue streams tighten over time.

Passengers traveling by bus or train in Frankfurt, Germany, will have more options to pay for tickets using their mobile phones if they are carrying a Blackberry device when using the Rhein-Main Verkehrsverbund transportation system.

The launch of Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Fire in late September stoked the flames of the tablet war raging among providers such as Hewlett-Packard Co., Apple Inc., Research in Motion Inc. and Amazon Inc.

Controversy brewed in the Android Marketplace last week when Bank of America Corp. began rolling out a person-to-person payment feature in its mobile-banking application.

Apple Inc. is taking a pass on mobile payments for now as its new iPhone lacks a Near Field Communication chip.

OfficeMax Inc. customers may tap and pay using the Google Wallet mobile phone payment application at new checkout terminals the retailer has placed in more than 100 of its stores, the office-supply company announced Oct. 3.

Apriva LLC has released the Apriva Secure Communication Suite, which its ISS division designed to help secure mobile communications, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company announced Oct. 3.

Most banks design mobile sites as shrunken versions of online banking. Citigroup Inc.'s new website instead takes the lessons of mobile and blows them up for a bigger screen.

Banks are pushing mobile devices for payments, but an untapped–and more immediate–opportunity may involve using mobile phones to improve security on mainstream payment types, according to one security vendor.