Mobile payments

The transit card may be on its way to joining tokens in the dustbin, as huge contactless payment deployments in cities like Beijing add flexibility for commuters and reveal the broader utility of Near Field Communication.

EBay and PayPal were once rivals, but in 2002 they joined to become a single company. Since then, PayPal has worked to move beyond the confines of its parent's online auction site. It is now well prepared for its planned spinoff.

Boku Inc. is working with European mobile network operators to enable users to buy physical goods through its carrier billing service, which previously faced regulatory constraints that limited it to digital content sales.

Capital One's new Capital One Wallet is a cardholder app for Apple's devices that uses an Android-like pattern-recognition feature for authentication.

Despite the controversy over bending handsets and a broken iOS update, Apple’s iPhone 6 remains the must-buy addition to the smartphone sector, continuing to draw in the crowds.

By hiring former American Express executive Dan Schulman to lead an independent PayPal, the company is betting that his expertise — bringing innovation to a well-established international payments company — can ensure PayPal's survival.

InComm will work with the Merchant Customer Exchange to support digital gift card and loyalty programs for retailers, while also expanding MCX's CurrentC mobile wallet to more locations.

EBay's planned spinoff of PayPal, announced today, is a necessary and inevitable response to the influx of disruption coming to the payments industry from unconventional sources. As companies like Amazon.com, Apple and Wal-Mart take a growing interest in the payments market, PayPal's status as a unit of a rival e-commerce company limited its role.

Shopkick is being acquired by SK Planet (SKP), and aims to replicate success of its Seoul-based buyer, which serves three-quarters of South Korea's population of 50 million.

During World War II, Lockheed Martin created a program called Skunk Works, which used specialized teams of developers for lightning-fast brainstorming to accelerate the research and development of new planes. That is how a lot of payments innovation is getting done today.

Wal-Mart is both a powerhouse in retail and a pioneer in financial services. The company has championed numerous initiatives in prepaid and mobile payments, and it has also been quick to push back on technologies it does not like.

Ingenico Group is leveraging its experience in EMV-chip terminal upgrades and new momentum from Apple Pay to better position itself for the U.S. conversion to smart-card technology.

Spire Payments will supply Indian Overseas Bank with more than 7,500 mobile point of sale devices in its mPOS deployment in the Chennai region of India.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s deal to distribute Green Dot Corp.'s mobile checking account, GoBank, signals a fundamental change in how both companies approach their audience.

Visa Inc. is planning to hire 2,000 employees to strengthen its technology strategy.

Fifty-two percent of millennial respondents in a Zogby Analytics survey sponsored by Mitek Systems, a mobile imaging tech provider, perceive native apps as a safer solution than mobile websites for purchasing and banking.

Revel Systems' deal with the New Orleans-based Smoothie King franchise will be the largest deployment to date of its iPad point of sale software.

MyECheck has established the required relationships to proceed with the launch of its mobile payment apps early next year, a delay from its originally planned mid-2014 launch date.

The payments industry has changed dramatically over the past year, and so has the mindset of those in the industry. The focus is shifting from mobile payments and Bitcoin to fraud mitigation and security.

Merchants using Revel Systems' iPad point-of-sale software will now have the option to incorporate Web ordering into the system, and will also be able to accept Apple Pay when Apple's mobile wallet launches next month.