Mobile payments

Sports Fusion and MasterCard processing subsidiary DataCash are working to unify the normally siloed purchasing experiences at sporting events.

For a technology still in the midst of evolving, mobile payments attract an overwhelming amount of interest. Competition between payment systems is intense — as the Wall Street Journal recently noted, AngelList’s mobile payments startup roster includes more than 640 players.

Perhaps the biggest question swirling around this week's Finovate conference is: why are mobile payments still more hope than reality?

Facebook's payment system has processed $3 billion in transactions for developers, with 100 of its developers making over $1 million a year through Facebook.

Intuit is in discussions to purchase bill payment company Check Inc., according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Revel Systems is offering a new accessibility bundle for its tablet-based point of sale system.

U.S. Bank's addition of "instant" person to person payments is a response to consumer expectations: If mobile payments are supposed to replace cash, they should be as fast as cash.

EBay Inc. is looking at ways it can bring Venmo's mobile person-to-person payment method and the Venmo Touch mobile purchasing system into PayPal's ecosystem, eBay executives said in a conference call to discuss first-quarter earnings.

Equifax is working with the mobile payments company Zumigo to jointly develop fraud prevention software.

Square has launched an order-ahead feature and other services to boost its appeal to brick-and-mortar merchants, but history has shown that merchants can be fickle about which features they'll pay more to use.

U.S. Bank will enable real-time person-to-person payments through Fiserv's Popmoney.

Fleet card provider WEX plans to release an app that tells motorists where the most cost-effective gas station is based on their location rather than just showing the price of gas.

After previous tests resulted in mobile phone payments taking a little longer to complete a transaction than a contactless Oyster card, Transport for London is again trying Near Field Communication-enabled phones for payment on its rail network and Tube underground rails.

Starbucks may soon make the tools behind its successful m-commerce strategy available to other retailers.

PayPal and the mobile technology provider QikServe are working to enable U.K. hospitality businesses to accept orders and payments through the PayPal smartphone app.

Mobile imaging is vital to Green Dot's GoBank account, which relies on the mobile device for nearly all customer interaction.

Apple CEO Tim Cook detailed in an April 23 earnings call what many have believed will be the foundation for Apple's entry into payments: a strong iTunes customer base.

American Express' Serve prepaid account has its roots as a digital wallet, but the card issuer is finding many of its enrollments are coming through a very non-digital process: in-person activations at mobile phone stores.

Apple is interviewing payments industry executives, according to the technology news site Recode, suggesting the computing giant is getting closer to launching a payments operation.

Domino's Pizza customers with Android devices can now pay for their pizza through the Google Wallet.