Economy

Phillips 66 has joined the retailer-driven Merchant Customer Exchange mobile payments and commerce initiative, the Houston-based gas station chain announced May 23. Phillips 66 also operates Conoco stations. The company joins MCX only two weeks after the mobile payment venture added another petroleum provider, Pacific Convenience & Fuels LLC.

Charge Anywhere LLC will have gateway software available when small U.S. merchants need to accept EMV-chip card payments with their smartphones.

Roam, an Ingenico subsidiary, prides itself on supplying ISOs with all of the components for accepting mobile payments.

Blaze Mobile is developing a new Near Field Communication mobile phone attachment that attempts to build a more open mobile wallet by allowing consumers to choose from a series of payment accounts.

ZooZ is one several companies building new technology that attempts to improve the integration between marketing and mobile payments.

Square announced expansion into Japan with updated Register features today, after seeing two executives, Alyssa Cutright and Alex Petrov, leave the mobile payments company.

AnywhereCommerce is introducing a card reader about the size of a Zippo lighter that plugs into the audio jacks of mobile devices to accept both magnetic-stripe and chip-and-signature EMV payment cards.

AnywhereCommerce is introducing a card reader that plugs into mobile devices to accept both magnetic-stripe and EMV cards.

A turn towards small local Bitcoin exchanges could keep the digital currency out of trouble while preserving the self-sufficient ethos of the Bitcoin community.

PayPal will offer free payment processing through the end of 2013 to merchants that “trade in” their cash registers.

Sprint's Boost Mobile prepaid phone service developed a mobile wallet as a way to provide financial services for its underbanked target audience.

Attendees at the Bitcoin2013 conference were excited about the technology's potential to disrupt the payments business – specifically micropayments, international remittances and charitable giving.

EBay Inc. said PayPal will be available in 2 million retail stores this year as it takes on Square Inc. and Intuit Inc. in the market for mobile payments.

The tech company's new services represent a virtual slap in the face for the likes of banks and PayPal. If added to Google Glass, they potentially represent a knockout punch.

ShopKeep POS designed Surround 360, its iPad point of sale software, to protect independent sales organizations from competitors out to "steal" merchant clients.

ScanPay's card-scanning technology, which allows consumers to enter their card credentials by scanning the card with a phone's camera, was designed to reduce cart abandonment at mobile shopping sites.

Google and Square have entered the notoriously challenging person-to-person payment field, sidestepping one of the major hurdles other companies have faced: signing up new users.