Mobile payments

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.

There's a lot of investment flowing into mobile payments technology, and perhaps this is more than the market can sustain.

The ATM maker Diebold has deployed a machine at Diebold Federal Credit Union that operates without a card reader or PIN pad.

Sionic Mobile, a provider of mobile marketing, gifting, payments and rewards programs, has embedded Google Wallet payments into its ION Rewards app.

QR codes, which are commonly used in mobile wallets to link to a consumer's payment account, can just as easily link to phishing sites, malware and other nasty surprises.

Merchants who in recent years viewed mobile payments as experimental now say they consider the technology vital in e-commerce, even though many remain concerned about fraud.

Starbucks now gets 14% of its in-store U.S. payments from its mobile app, the company reported at its annual shareholder meeting today. This indicates a steady increase since June 2013, when it received 10% of U.S. payments through its mobile app.

Commuters in New York City may still use magnetic-stripe MetroCards to pay fares for five years to come, but transportation officials say they are considering some more modern options.

Payleven is launching a new chip and PIN card reader that's capable of accepting Near Field Communication contactless payments, with the aim of cutting costs for European merchants.

Wine may improve with age, but point of sale technology does not. Years ago, when ShopKeep POS founder Jason Richelson operated the Green Grape wine store in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, he struggled so often with archaic point of sale systems that it motivated him to develop his own alternative.

The corporate payment provider Wex has elected Eric Duprat to its board of directors.

Burger King Worldwide Inc. is introducing an application that will allow customers to pay for Whoppers with their smartphones as it races rivals to woo younger diners.