Mobile payments

The future belongs to mobile payments, but that future remains unclear, as many competing technologies are vying for consumers' attention.

Smartwatches may not be popular enough or have enough screen real estate to usurp smartphones as the next major mobile payment device, but there is a strong potential for the two technologies to work in tandem.

This year roughly $507 billion in payments around the globe will be made through mobile devices, up 40% compared to 2013, according to Juniper Research.

VeriFone Systems plans to offer a new portable card terminal that can accept EMV-chip card payments and uses several wireless technologies.

Roam, Ingenico's mobile point of sale subsidiary, has partnered with services provider EVO Payments International to market Roam's technology to U.S. merchants.

Powa is launching a bundled mobile point of sale offering, called PowaPOS, which U.S. merchants can use to accept EMV-chip cards.

CardFlight, a mobile payments hardware and software developer, has introduced a mobile point of sale device with an emphasis on branding.

The merchants who want to use Leaf's tablet for payments, called LeafPresenter, often also need transaction services. Through the launch of its online marketplace, Leaf will now be ready to offer information from a host of merchant acquirers.

Walmart has long been as much a force in financial services as it has been in retail. Here are some of ways Walmart and its executives have shaped - and challenged - the payments industry.

Peter Hazlehurst, Google Wallet's director of product management, has quit Google, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

SCVNGR's LevelUp has begun a campaign to urge users of its mobile wallet to fund payments from a debit card instead of a credit card. The end goal is to get its transaction fees as low as possible, while filling a void left by merchants who switched away from another pricing model it boldly called Interchange Zero.

In the technology market, making the jump from early adoption to the mainstream is the difference between becoming the next iPad and becoming the next Laserdisc. Mobile wallets find themselves in this very position today as a next-gen product in need of a push to reach their tipping point.

Consumers in the U.K. are being encouraged to sign up for a new payments system that will allow person-to-person transfers to a mobile phone number.

VeriFone Systems had five of its Payware EMV-enabled mobile card readers approved for the Visa Ready Program.

Credit bureau Equifax Inc. is leveraging its trove of consumer data to streamline the purchasing process on the Web and mobile devices.

PayPal now offers the chip-and-PIN version of its PayPal Here mobile card reader to merchants in Australia.

Vodafone's M-Pesa mobile money service, known for quickly developing a devout following of users in Africa, will help the telecom expand in parts of Europe that its more high-tech payment offerings can't reach.

MasterCard's payment processing subsidiary DataCash is leveraging the card network's development arm to lure merchants with a mix of technology that includes mobile payments, digital marketing and augmented reality.

The quick-service restaurant industry has a strong appetite for mobile payments as a way to make fast food sales happen even faster.

Much like Africa, India is proving to be fertile ground for mobile money services, and payments processor Calpian plans to extend its reach in the market.