Economy

About half of the customers who use JPMorgan Chase's Liquid prepaid card are financially underserved, and 30% of them have no other relationship with a bank, an executive said today.

July Systems provides tools for merchants unfamiliar with programming to put together revenue-generating mobile experiences — with a hint of social media and a dash of mobile commerce.

Pundits admonish independent sale organizations to “go beyond” providing transaction services by offering value-added products that help merchants increase profits. Here’s an ISO that’s doing exactly that.

Visa is aggressively building its presence with mobile point of sale vendors in an effort to attract the merchants that still don't accept electronic payments and rely heavily on cash and checks.

Kuapay has finished a design upgrade and enhancement to its mobile wallet that borrows from the past—consumers see actual images of cards and coupons when looking at the screen

Visa is working to approve more mobile point of sale hardware, including products from iZettle, SumUp and Swiff.

Merchant Warehouse will make its Genius payments and marketing platform available to Retail Pro International LLC customers in what amounts to "future-proofing and a lot more" for the merchant payment terminals, says CEO Henry Helgeson.

Total Merchant Services, a 17-year-old Woodland Hills, Calif.-based ISO, began transforming itself into a more tech-oriented company a year-and-a-half ago when the founders, brothers Ed and Matt Freedman, hired Joe Kaplan as CEO.

With the government cracking down on digital currency players such as Liberty Reserve and Mt. Gox, many ask whether it's a move to squash the development of virtual currencies and what action the government will take next.

As EMV-chip cards spread, with most U.S. merchants expected to accept the card by October 2015, there is still a major hurdle to overcome as consumers either resist the change or remain oblivious to it.

Zipmark, a company that allows businesses to send and receive digital checks, is working with the processor Vantiv Inc., potentially bringing more than 400,000 merchant relationships to Zipmark's money transfer platform.

Blackhawk Network Inc. is working with Monitise PLC to enable U.S. consumers to purchase gift cards on their smartphones through their financial institution's mobile banking site.

Liberty Reserve provided a service that had a true market demand from legitimate business sectors and from non-criminals, notwithstanding the government’s claim that “virtually all” its business was illicit. If banks and traditional financial institutions still respected basic client privacy and facilitated some form of digital payments that did not always involve harmful reversibility to the merchants, then companies like Liberty Reserve wouldn't even be necessary.

LevelUp has made numerous changes to its mobile-payments technology as it has aggressively spread its system to new consumers and merchants alike.

I-Free is offering a number of contactless payment services in Russia, including a mobile wallet that allows the remote issuance and download of mobile MasterCard PayPass cards, transportation fare services and geolocation-based coupons.

Believe.in, a U.K. company that provides technology for accepting donations online, has a no-fee structure that allows charities to receive donations using technology from Stripe.

BlueSnap is among a growing number of vendors offering to manage the complex programming needs of emerging payments systems on behalf of other companies.

Natural Security SAS hopes North America will be as receptive to its biometric payment authentication system as France is.