Economy

When Shae Whitney was selling bitters at farmer's markets for a year and a half, she used Square's mobile card reader to accept payments. But when she opened a retail location with her partner in June, she switched to Groupon's iPad-based point of sale system, Breadcrumb.

There has been an avalanche of new mobile technology in just the past few weeks. The iPhone 5s, Samsung Galaxy Gear and Google Moto X bring with them a wide range of new systems for payments — and companies like PayPal and Fiserv are making noise with new products of their own.

Payment processor Cynergy is getting into the mobile point of sale game, hoping its existing mix of merchant services and mobile technology will capture attention in a crowded market.

MCX, a retailer-driven mobile commerce initiative, is being steadily built upon retailers' desire to control their own customer data and possibly lessen the sting of, or bypass totally, card payment interchange fees. But it must still deliver two key things: a brand and a product.

MagicBand, a system that Walt Disney Co. has been testing all year with a limited number of employees and Walt Disney World resort patrons, seems to be poised for success based on what looks like an extreme level of commitment to it — so far.

The launch of PayPal’s revamped mobile app may demonstrate the company has laid the foundation to become a serious offline payments player.

Seven card-issuing banks can sue Heartland Payment Systems Inc. for negligence stemming from the processor’s 2008 data breach, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

Many mobile commerce systems are built on the premise that we need something simpler than typing a complex password on a small screen. With the iPhone 5S, Apple unveiled its own solution: a fingerprint scanner.

Lighter Capital is mining Big Data to analyze credit risk from a novel source: the sales pipeline. The startup is pulling information about prospective business borrowers from Salesforce's Customer Relationship Management system into its online lending platform.

Today's the day Apple unveils the successor to the iPhone 5. Here's a look at the leaks, patent applications and other rumors that shed light on the company's mobile payment plans.

PayPal has unveiled PayPal Beacon, a plug-in device for merchants that will detect when shoppers running PayPal's mobile app enter a store.

Buttercoin wanted to be a Bitcoin exchange, but after being discouraged or outright rejected by over 76 financial institutions, it chose a different path.

Software created by developers at TechCrunch's Disrupt SF Hackathon shows Glass' potential for digital transactions beyond clothing.

Cynergy Data has chosen Roam’s white-label product to power its Vwalaa mobile payment brand.

The launch of PayPal's revamped mobile app is a coming out party for the eBay unit to prove it's laid the foundation to be a serious offline payments player by employing strategies that differ greatly from how it achieved success as an e-commerce payments scheme.

Target has emerged as a leader in store-branded debit cards. The goal of such cards is to use data analytics and discounts to cement customers’ loyalty.

Under new rules, health insurance companies must let consumers pay their monthly premiums with general purpose prepaid debit cards.

A new outsourcing model breaks work up into tiny pieces and farms it out to large groups of freelancers, taking advantage of "cognitive surplus."