Disruptors

Stripe, a tech company that helps other companies build payments technology, has hired U.K. technology entrepreneur Andy Young to help drive Stripe’s expansion in the United Kingdom and other markets.

Miami Dolphins fans would no longer have to tackle big crowds at the concession stands if Sun Life Stadium can put a plan in place to use mobile apps to order and pay for food.

Smoothie maker Jamba Juice Co. built its menu around variety and customer choice. Its approach to mobile payments is no different.

The prepaid card industry has a lot to teach the companies that handle virtual currencies, as the Bitcoin economy begins to attract the same regulatory scrutiny prepaid cards received over the past several years.

Flattr, a Swedish micropayments company, is discontinuing a Twitter-related payments service after apparently running afoul of Twitter's advertising rules.

Fiserv is changing the name of its ACCEL/Exchange payments network to Accel, a move that draws attention to Fiserv's technology as the company competes against rivals such as Fidelity National Information Services and develops new emerging payments technology.

Virtual Piggy Inc., an alternative payment provider for teens, announced three new members to its board of directors.

Despite the abundance of portable card readers, the sales pitch is often the same: it's for babysitters, gardeners, flea market sellers and other small merchants. Payleven says the market can be much bigger.

LevelUp's partnership with Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services could expand the mobile payment system's presence in the Midwest, a region that has received less attention from startups than San Francisco and New York.

Evertec Inc., a significant acquirer processor and card issuer in Latin America and the Caribbean region for 25 years, is casting part of its business as that market's Square Inc. and looking to supercharge its payments business after its April 12 initial public offering.

Bank of America says it and other banks, which have a full view of each customer's financial needs, are well-positioned to succeed as mobile payments providers.

MoonClerk is a new company that's targeting a distinct segment of the payments technology market—the startups and small businesses that want to build a Web payment acceptance engine, but don't have the right tech expertise in-house.

EBay Inc.’s PayPal unit is buying Iron Pearl, a startup that helps companies find ways to make their products more attractive to customers on the Web.

A dramatic dip in the value of Bitcoin is not fallout from a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack, said Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox in a Facebook post overnight Wednesday. But there was indeed a DDOS attack.

Mobile payment provider Payleven is adding two new features to lure larger businesses—the ability to manage multiple chip-and-PIN card readers from a single master account and support for both mobile and stationary printer systems.

The retailer-driven Merchant Customer Exchange mobile payments venture is making a lot of noise, though it has yet to reveal its product. But since the final MCX app will interact with those made by its individual retailers, CVS Caremark Corp. can serve as an early example of the venture's potential.

OpenCoin, Chris Larsen's virtual-currency venture, announced today it has closed funding from several investors, including Bitcoin Opportunity Fund.

FamZoo says its bundled prepaid cards and online dashboard work as teaching tools, which can bridge a knowledge gap about payments and budgets, particularly among young people.

Even though prepaid cards are already widely considered a product for the underbanked, usage patterns are showing more clearly just how different prepaid card users are from bank customers.