Mobile payments

Apple has big plans for payments, but it's not outspoken about what they are. However, more of its behind-the-scenes efforts are starting to leak; these six reports came in just the past two months.

PayPal will support the new Amazon Fire phone, which went on sale this week, in the latest move by the eBay subsidiary to make sure it has an app for any newly launched mobile device.

Zing is releasing an iPad app that leverages Web hosted technology to access a large selection of business functions through the point of sale.

Mobile payments now account for over 15% of transactions in U.S. company-operated Starbucks stores, where the company accepts an average of six million mobile transactions every week. This is a sharp increase from a year ago.

Visa, which just revamped its digital payment system, will introduce secure "tokens" in September to replace the 16-digit account number for online payments.

PayPal has expanded its mobile payment options in the Netherlands by working with Rabobank's MyOrder.

Happy Belly Curbside Kitchen, which operates out of food trucks, is planning to become a sit-down restaurant within the next year and is relying on mobile point of sale technology to make the transition.

Apple may have to place more emphasis on the iPad's capabilities as mobile point of sale devices to help it recover from a small but sharp decline in tablet sales.

Nearly 80 percent of U.S. consumers responding to an online poll said they are aware that they could be using digital wallets, but not nearly as many actually do.

MasterCard is planting its roots deeper into mobile commerce as a growing number of rivals try to edge it out of the market.

Amazon has released a beta version of an Amazon Wallet App that is currently focused on shopping and discounts, though it could serve as a launch pad for mobile payments.

Bluetooth beacons, which can transmit offers to a nearby customer's smartphone and payment data to a merchant, have huge potential. But to get the most out of beacons, merchants have to place several of them throughout their stores, increasing the overall cost of deploying what is still a very new technology.

Nintendo's Wii U video game console, which has a Near Field Communication reader built into its controller, is finally putting that technology to use to accept payment cards.

A PayPal-run promotion provided a measurable mobile payments boost for Van Leeuwen Ice Cream Artisans, suggesting there's an appetite for a type of mobile payment that rival companies like Square have abandoned.

Mobile wallets are designed to make it easy to pay from a linked credit or debit card, but the process of using loyalty and gift cards can be a bit trickier. CashStar is working to take some of the pain out of this process for users of its gift card platform.

The newly rebranded Visa Checkout is the latest of the card network's attempts to create a more streamlined, digital payment process that moves past the plastic card. Visa and Visa Europe have embarked on many projects around the globe in recent years, targeting e-commerce, mobile payments, P2P and other use cases.

As technology gets more complex, the process of making a payment must remain simple, says The Members Group. The vendor's innovation lab is keeping this philosophy in mind when it designs payment applications for new products like Google Glass

Cardfree, a mobile payments provider run by several of the people who designed the successful Starbucks mobile payment app, is using cloud-based technology to simplify the process of deploying its technology as it eyes international markets.

Mobile point of sale provider Appetize is targeting entertainment venues and music festivals, a niche that's often a testing ground for payments technology.

Check, a bill pay app owned by Intuit, has launched a feature some financial institutions have been positioning as a competitive differentiator: the ability to pay paper bills using the smartphone camera.