Mobile payments

A new Bluetooth standard limits how beacons can track and deliver messages to people near stores, but this may not be a death knell to proximity-based payments and marketing.

FitPay Inc., a wearable technology provider, is betting that the only way to change consumer behavior is to eliminate consumer behavior.

As card networks develop tokens to stand in for account numbers in online and mobile commerce, they may be able to standardize the experience across all companies that handle payments, said Mike Matan, head of global network business at American Express.

?Square Inc. has hired former Visa marketing executive Kevin Burke to lead its customer acquisition initiatives in retail, paid, Web and events marketing channels.??

MasterCard is investing in and partnering with card technology company Dynamics to embed greater function into U.S. payment cards, a mission that has sputtered in past years.

Mobile payment share for Alipay, the payment affiliate of Alibaba, rose to 54% of payments in the first ten months of 2014 from 22% all last year.

SignaPay, a payment processing company based in Irving, Texas, has acquired PayHub, a merchant services company in San Rafael, Calif.

As mobile commerce and other new technologies change the way people shop, fraudsters are changing their methods to adapt. Banks, fintech providers and consumers are all looking at security in new ways.

Virgin Money has struck a seven-year deal with the British financial tech company Monitise to develop the U.K. bank's mobile products.

Multi-account card providers Coin and Stratos Card have an EMV compliance gap that may prove problematic for their relationships with card issuers.

MasterCard will soon make its digital wallet available to consumers in China.

Zomato hasn't been able to add payment capabilities to its restaurant discovery app in its home base of India, but the company has found a more welcoming audience in Dubai, where it plans a pilot next month.

Sprint's Boost Mobile Wallet and Sprint Money Express have added features that allow users to buy and send electronic gift cards.

For Cubic Transportation Systems, the term "NextCity" describes a city in which consumers use a single account for transit and parking while making payments through a smart card or mobile app.

Dutch digital security company Gemalto and Chungwa Telecom, a Taiwanese firm, plan to commercially launch Near Field Communication-based mobile payment system for the telco's subscribers.

Stripe Inc. has raised $70 million in a financing round that values the digital-payments startup at $3.5 billion.

Nearly four years ago, U.S. Bancorp debuted a medical bracelet that could also make payments. The product was short-lived, but the bank is taking a fresh look at the advancement of wearable technology in recent years and its potential for payments and other financial functions.

Revel Systems plans to expand in Europe after securing a $1.2 million grant from Invest Northern Ireland.

BlueSnap has launched a new system called ChargeLink to help businesses close sales over the phone.

Bitcoin wallet providers have had a touchy relationship with prepaid cards. But whether or not these companies care about plastic, they should care about how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's prepaid proposal affects them.