Economy

LevelUp founder Seth Priebatsch could barely contain his excitement when discussing the possibilities of Google Glass, a mobile device built into a headset that Google sells only to a limited number of early adopters.

Retailers are bombarded with new mobile payment methods. Many merchants chose to move forward with two or more new technologies rather than bet their future on just one mobile wallet.

Google Glass, a headset built by Google to be the next big mobile device, doesn't do much yet. But its features open new possibilities to companies like Square, LevelUp and PayPal as they seek to take over the point of sale.

The mobile billing company Boku and entertainment giant Sony now allow consumers in the U.K. to purchase content from Sony's PlayStation Store by adding the charges to their mobile phone accounts.

Telecommunications company Everything Everywhere Ltd., operating as EE in the U.K., will offer a new mobile payments service to its customers July 17.

A high-tech crowdfunding firm plans to make investing in early-stage startups as easy as buying a stock on E-Trade.

Users of the currency exchange Ripple Network can now make payments in any currency directly to all Bitcoin users, including 8,500 Bitcoin merchants, through a partnership with BitStamp.net.BitStamp.net allows the Ripple Network to convert currencies into bitcoins by accepting payments in any currency and paying merchants in bitcoins. The offering, called Bitcoin Bridge, was announced at the Bitcoin London conference July 2.

Don Mattrick, who has led development of the Xbox video game console for six years as Microsoft's president of interactive entertainment, is leaving the company to become CEO of social media game developer Zynga.

California’s financial regulator has baffled observers by sending a cease-and-desist “warning letter” to the Bitcoin Foundation. Did the Golden State’s bureaucrats blindly send out letters to any organization it could find with the word “bitcoin” in its name?

As Citigroup has gotten acclimated with person-to-person payments, it's starting to loosen the restrictions on Popmoney, the Fiserv technology it offers to online banking customers.

Square Inc. has ended its gift card service, according to a report from Reuters, about half a year after launching the program.

Birch Coffee has used Square's mobile card reader for its delivery service for about two years, and was one of the first to switch to the new Square Market e-commerce site ahead its launch.

MasterCard has begun offering U.S. merchants and developers Simplify Commerce, a product of MasterCard labs, the Purchase, N.Y. card network's research and development lab.

Payments startup Clinkle has attracted a long roster of Silicon Valley investors for its new payments technology, which is expected to debut within the next year.

CCBill has developed a portal to help merchants analyze data produced by payments to spot purchasing patterns and other trends that can tie past transactions to future business strategy.

Space travel and tourism are achievable dreams for the near future, and PayPal aims to reach the final frontier before its rivals do.

American Banker's Sean Sposito reports on his first day using Google Glass, the tech giant's head-mounted computer.

What does the future of payments look like through Google Glass? Reporter Sean Sposito got ahold of Google's wearable new gadget, and delivers his first impressions.

The Electronic Payments Practice Group of Jaffe Raitt Heuer & Weiss, P.C. has launched a legal and business blog called ElectronicPaymentsLaw.com.

Small business online service provider Web.com has incorporated MasterCard's digital wallet, MasterPass, into its offerings, enabling MasterCard to dramatically and quickly expand MasterPass' merchant base.