Mobile payments

When Square created the market for mobile point of sale devices, Verifone got defensive. Today, with the rollout of its Engage platform, Verifone is going on the offense.

Stockholm-based Seamless will soon integrate Near Field Communication technology into SEQR, its mobile payment app that was originally designed around the use of QR codes.

Addressing the desire of small merchants that want a straightforward way to sell online, Square and Ecwid are partnering to synchronize sales and inventory between the physical and digital worlds.

More than a mere buzzword, "omnichannel" is as close as the payments industry has come to assigning a name to the group of actions that make up a complete purchase across the retail store, Web and mobile devices.

European mobile point of sale company SumUp has brought its technology across the pond.

MasterCard plans to add its tokenization service to the MasterPass digital wallet to boost security for online and in-app purchasing.

Stockholm-based Seamless is threading currency exchange into its QR code-based mobile payment platform SEQR.

With EMV cards fighting counterfeit fraud at the point of sale, Gemalto Inc. says the timing is perfect to launch a payment card with a dynamic verification code to provide a similar improvement to e-commerce security.

Even before Apple Pay burst onto the scene last year as an enabler — and, in many ways, a competitor — of bank mobile wallets, U.S. banks have been told by investors, industry experts and customers to develop their own payment apps.

One of the top lieutenants in Silicon Valley is leaving the side of one high-profile Internet executive in Marissa Mayer to join another, Jack Dorsey.