Mobile payments

The telecom-driven mobile money provider M-Pesa has expanded to Europe, with cash-heavy Romania as its first market.

Already a major card issuer in the military market, Navy Federal Credit Union is working to expand its merchant services business through new agreements with Square and TSYS.

Square is accelerating its integration with third parties to save the time and resources it would take to develop the business technology it needs to stay competitive in an increasingly sophisticated and crowded mobile payments marketplace.

University students and faculty in Spain, Brazil, Chile and Mexico can use their mobile phones to gain access to buildings and make payments at on-campus restaurants through technology provided to Banco Santander by digital security provider Gemalto.

Already a major card issuer in the military market, Navy Federal Credit Union is working to expand its merchant services business through new agreements with Square and TSYS.

Even the biggest success stories in mobile payments have skeletons in their closets. But each company learned from its mistakes and was quick to adapt.

McDonald's customers in Thailand now have the option to make credit card payments to a mobile device as part of the McDelivery 1711 service.

BlackBerry once seemed to be a good bet for mobile payments, with a large installed userbase even when iPhone and Android handsets were still considered a luxury rather than a necessity.

LevelUp is offering users a monthly cash back bonus for linking a debit card as a funding source for its mobile payment app.

Allied Payment Network and Malauzai Software plan to use video and chat to develop new mobile payment methods.

Payzone, a provider of payment technology for retail stores, hotels and restaurants, is planning to offer Seamless' SEQR mobile wallet to its approximately 20,000 clients.

Most digital wallets are focused on shopping, marketing and recurring payments, though mobile payment company PyxPay and donation payments company Interactive Donor Corp. are applying the concept to charitable giving.

MasterCard has entered into a commercial agreement with Monitise that includes cooperative development and a plan by the card network to make a minority investment in the technology company.

Wirecard has integrated Host Card Emulation into its mobile wallet platform, enabling businesses to handle contactless mobile payments with fewer of the hurdles inherent to Near Field Communication payments.

Navy Federal Credit Union is promoting Square's mobile card reader and payment processing services to its small-business members.

Boku Inc. is partnering with Sunhill Technologies to offer a mobile payment system for motorists in Europe to bill parking costs to their mobile phone account.

Square is making all of its payment apps in available in Spanish in an effort to attract Latino merchants in the U.S.

Mobile payments company I Love Velvet has joined the Samsung Solutions Exchange, which provides business owners with tools and applications for Samsung devices.

Alipay, created a decade ago as the payments unit for China's e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and since spun off, has established itself as a world leader in online and mobile payments.

Innovation can come from unlikely places. Five years ago, few would have guessed that the most widely available mobile wallets would be developed by companies like Starbucks and Google, which built their names in completely different fields. Several more disruptors are joining the scene, with even weirder origins.