Mobile payments

Apple Inc. has taken its time to establish a potential foothold in payments, never seeming to follow the path set by its rivals and never seeming to indicate just how close it is to the finish line.

PayPal's adjustments to its developer program will provide an early look at how the company's Braintree acquisition will change PayPal's approach to new payments technology.

While this still hinders some customers' adoption of their bank or credit union's mobile bill pay offerings, in reality, today's technology has made mobile bill pay more secure and easier than ever before.

Mobile carriers are becoming more heavily involved in the payments world. Many are spearheading tests and full deployments of mobile wallets throughout the world, and some like T-Mobile are launching prepaid cards as well.

Incipio's Cashwrap sleeve for Apple iPhones, announced a year ago as a companion to the Isis mobile wallet, will soon be available for purchase at AT&T company-owned stores.

Finnish bank OP-Pohjola has introduced a mobile point of sale system designed to help consumers take advantage of local tax breaks.

Nearly 10 million Starbucks customers use its mobile app to make payments, totaling close to 5 million mobile payments a week, the company reports.

Paydiant has received a patent covering technology that allows consumers to withdraw cash out of ATMs with their smartphones, a feature that it says should appeal to banks.

Vienna-based prepaid payment provider paysafecard has updated its mobile app to include augmented reality, a technology that displays data over a view of the physical world.

Swedish mobile point of sale company iZettle has launched a software development kit (SDK) to allow other companies to leverage iZettle's technology to build payments services.

Mobile shopping provider Airtag has developed a mobile wallet service for international grocery chain Distribuidora Internacional de Alimentacion SA, allowing customers to order and pay for groceries prior to pickup.

EBay CEO John Donahoe provided a glimpse into PayPal's ongoing strategy for mobile payments in defending his company's conclusion that it should not spin off the subsidiary.

Whereas banks have long struggled to migrate financial relationships onto mobile devices and to attract the underserved, carriers like T-Mobile come into the market with a distinct advantage.

RBC has rolled out its mobile wallet, enabling consumers to use certain smartphones to make payments funded by Visa credit cards or Interac, Canada's national debit card program.

T-Mobile is launching a prepaid card, aiming to use mobile account access as a selling point to attract underbanked consumers.

For Welcome to Moe's Inc., a franchisee of Moe's Southwest Grill, migrating to iMobile3's PassMarket mobile loyalty program improved customer engagement and reduced the fraud that ran rampant with an earlier paper-based loyalty program.

More commuters using Near Field Communication-enabled smartphones on Chicago's buses and elevated train system may soon be able to pay fares by tapping the phone against a reader in the station terminal.

Swedish bank Swedbank will close down Bart, its proprietary mobile payment program.

Kofax is launching new image capture technology that can be used for mobile marketing and offer redemption tied to multi-channel payments.

As with any new technology, mobile wallets must earn the trust of the consumers and merchants who would use them. Many mobile payment apps may attempt to beef up security with password and PIN protection, but a few have had their security scrutinized very publicly.