Disruptors

Facebook is working with Payments technology provider Marqeta Inc. to add features to its stored-value Facebook Card.

Sam Yam was the college roommate of Jack Conte, half of the indie band Pomplamoose. Together, they founded Patreon to help artists like Conte raise funds from fans online.

Google has integrated Google Wallet with Gmail to allow users to send funds as email attachments.

Google has added a new checkout button on Android devices, enabling one-click purchases from the handsets, the company said in a presentation today.

Payments technology provider ZooZ has developed a product that combines mobile payments with advertising.

Two Standard Chartered customers aim to earn a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for making mobile banking transactions at a high altitude.

In a sign of the times, information security and authentication vendors dominate a fintech conference.

Leaf, which offers a tablet specifically for in-store card payments, has added new features designed to ease user experience and attract third-party developers.

Square has taken its biggest shot yet at traditional payment terminal manufacturers with Square Stand, a new card reader built to house an iPad that can be used in place of a stationary point of sale terminal.

PayPal will offer free payment processing through the end of 2013 to merchants that “trade in” their cash registers and adopt mobile point of sale technologies, in a move to entice small merchants to adopt digital payments.

Groupon's new Breadcrumb POS, a free app enabling merchants to use iPads as point of sale systems, is the latest part of the company's strategy to build a payments business for the small-merchant community it also serves through its daily-deals business.

Australian debit card company eftpos has signed a five-year agreement with mobile wallet technology developer C-Sam.

Earlier today Groupon POS, a mobile payment app for merchants using iPads as point of sale systems, was released on iTunes, but the app has since been pulled from the app store.

Amazon.com's virtual currency Amazon Coins, which launched today, has the potential to become a successful alternative to card payments — if the currency expands beyond digital app purchases.

U.S. consumers conducted nearly half of their online shopping using mobile devices, spending $5.9 billion in mobile commerce sales during the first quarter of 2013, according to Internet analytics firm Comscore.

Amazon launched its virtual currency, Amazon Coins, giving all U.S. Kindle Fire tablet owners $5 worth of free coins in their Amazon accounts and discounts for purchasing more in bulk.

Typically, I don't cover or analyze so-called payments innovations that merely embrace and extend the legacy infrastructure, but a new middleware startup, CardFlight, could actually operate as a payments "air traffic controller" because its code sits directly between the consumer and the processor.

Simon Haslam is becoming president and CEO of Elavon at a time of extreme stress for payments processors, which face nimble competitors, new payment standards and high-profile security risks.

Facebook Connect is an increasingly prevalent way for Internet users to skip registration for other websites by using their Facebook credentials instead — and to WePay, it's also a tool for fighting payment fraud.

New POS schemes bring uncertainties. Merchants need partners who can help them scale their solutions while growing sales and increasing customers.