Economy

Fidor Bank AG, of Munich, has agreed to help Bitcoin Deutschland GmbH, an exchange operator, to speed trading of bitcoins and comply with regulatory requirements.

The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX), a mobile payments initiative created by major retailers, will use technology from FIS to speed processing and provide access to accounts at a large range of financial institutions.

The payment processor Global Payments Inc. will offer its U.S. merchant customers an iPad point of sale system from ShopKeep POS.

The next big idea for payments is ready to spring to life, and MasterCard wants to be there when it happens.

The Electronic Transactions Association has launched a blog to provide industry insight and "thought-provoking content."

Payment Alliance International is providing its processing services to legitimate gun dealers.

Experts agree ISOs and agents and should become well-educated about smart-card technology and impart their knowledge to merchants.

Merchant payment and marketing company Punchey has hired Michael Sattler to be vice president of engineering and Rick Graham as director of demand generation.

The mobile bank account provider Simple will soon offer Braintree's mobile payment system, Venmo Touch, to its users.

In a pioneering social media move that banks could emulate, American Express is offering customers the option of receiving statement information via Facebook.

By July 2008, when Apple introduced the app store as part of the new iPhone 3G, the idea of mobile payments had largely flopped. The app store gave payments companies a second chance at creating the mobile wallet — but many still stumbled along the way.

Visa has entered agreements with more than 40 Australian banks to offer customers the V.me digital wallet for online shopping — a mere three months after MasterCard debuted its MasterPass digital wallet in Australia.

BBVA Ventures, the corporate venture arm of BBVA Group, is investing in SumUp, a company that enables mobile devices to accept card payments.

"Bitcoin." Just mentioning the digital currency brings about either a passionate discussion by enthusiasts or vehement criticism that near-anonymous payments are for criminals. In the following interview, serial tech entrepreneur Andreas Antonopoulos talks about the digital currency's rise to fame and the consequences of its popularity.

Mobile payment processor Net Element International Inc. has agreed to acquire European payment network and terminal provider Quickpay in a move to gain traction in Russian cash-based markets.

Six banks in Poland have created a joint venture to develop common mobile payment standards to comply with national regulations — a move that leaves card networks out of the equation.

The Fancy, an online shop with items culled by customers, raised $53 million from investors including American Express Co., billionaire Len Blavatnik and actor Will Smith, people familiar with the matter said.

Seeing coins as dead weight in payments, a startup called Coinvenience is designing a system to allow consumers to reject loose change by instructing retailers to deposit the leftover coins into a stored-value account at the point of sale.