Economy

Israeli startup MyCheck is launching its mobile payment app in New York City at the end of April, expanding its model of allowing consumers to pay tabs with a smartphone instead of waiting for servers to bring the check.

For the two-year-old LevelUp, the national expansion of a pilot the mobile-payment provider ran with the 16-year-old processor Heartland Payment Systems is nothing short of a godsend.

Bitcoin payment processor BitPay Inc. today announced its global processing volume for the month of March will exceed $2 million, a milestone for the company. BitPay is also reducing its fees.

Startup CommonBond crowdsources funds from alumni members and interested investors to establish a loan pool for student lending.

When remittance company Xoom decided to not withdraw money from its customers' bank accounts until the funds reach the recipient, it was betting the added goodwill from users would outweigh the added risk of fraud.

Virtual currencies have finally garnered enough of a following to make the U.S. government react. Bitcoin's a big focus, but even companies like Facebook and Amazon.com may have to take FinCEN's new rules into account.

It’s been a busy month for mobile and online payment technology provider Stripe, which took another step in its expansion plans by partnering with mobile application developer Parse.

Pencils and paper aren't normally associated with digital payments innovation—yet those tools may inspire a big project with FreedomPay and Barclays.

MasterCard plans to charge a digital-wallet fee to third-party payment providers as part of a new registration process, a move Visa's CEO called "totally appropriate" — but Discover says it is on a different path.

One of the first successful adopters of in-store mobile payments and digital rewards, Starbucks plans to launch new initiatives that will expand the company’s loyalty and payment programs across channels.

Heartland Payment Systems and SCVNGR's LevelUp are taking their merchant services and payments bundle, which they earlier tested in a handful of cities, nationwide.

Facebook's social network has been as hostile as Twitter's for payments companies seeking to tap into the site's millions of users. But American Express and Chirpify separately sensed an opportunity worth pursuing.

Leaf, a company that offers a payments-specific tablet, is opening to more processors in an effort to lure merchants away from Square and other point of sale acceptance companies.

Western Union on March 20 launched a new top-up program and technology to improve the ease of use of its stored-value services.

ISOs are offering charitable giving programs that help merchants drive donations whenever they accept credit cards.

As VeriFone Systems Inc. seeks new leadership to help it tackle its ongoing challenges, smaller rivals are looking at their own operations to determine which opportunities to seize in the payments hardware market.

More large incumbents are establishing in-house teams that mimic the culture — and, they hope, the success — of the increasingly prominent startups they compete with.

The fragile Bitcoin economy will change drastically as companies scramble to obtain the proper licensing in response to guidance from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), which categorizes administrators and exchangers of virtual currencies as money services businesses.

Planet Payment’s financial performance declined in the past year due in part to investments in new technology, which the company expects will improve acquirers’ ability to add services directly to point of sale systems, says CEO Philip Beck.

About six months after its successful debut of a mobile payment app at College Fest 2012 in Fenway Park, PXT Payments Inc. has another deal in place with Fenway Sports Management for its app, called "looped in."