Mobile payments

Emerging payments developers shouldn't feel forced to place all their bets on one platform or another. In the shorter term, successful future models of banking will be hybrids.

In the past few years, the payments industry has experienced a flood of new offerings, from consumer-facing giants like PayPal and Google to Silicon Valley startups such as Square.

The Minneapolis-based bank has been using mobile and digital watermark technology internally at board meetings to add multimedia elements to what would otherwise be static reports. It is now extending that technology to shopping and payments.

As more mobile wallets experiment with alternatives to Near Field Communication, Isis stuck to its use of the contactless payment technology. But will that prove to be a winning strategy or just a payments-industry fad?

As mobile wallets mature, so will attempts to use the technology to marry payments and marketing, says Fiserv's Matt Wilcox.

The Walt Disney Co.'s board of directors has elected Twitter and Square co-founder Jack Dorsey as an independent director.

Square, Google, PayPal and many other mobile payment providers overhauled their technology in 2013. Here's a look at how things changed, on the surface and underneath.

Mozido LLC, a white-label mobile technology provider, is piloting a person-to-person payment method using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology, allowing users within proximity of each other to transfer funds with their mobile devices.

PayPal's corporate parent eBay has completed its $800 million acquisition of Braintree.

MasterCard, eServGlobal and Bics have formed HomeSend, a joint venture that allows consumers to send money to and from mobile money accounts, cards, bank accounts or cash outlets.

La Caixa Bank says it will soon launch the largest mobile payment venture in Europe, once again placing the bank at the center of a major European payments initiative.

Jerome Cle has stepped down as CEO of SCCP Group. He will remain active as a board member and strategic advisor to the mobile payment technology provider.

A long winter delay at an airport is a perfect opportunity for the businesses that operate there. And especially during the holiday season, NCR Corp. aims to make sure airport merchants are properly equipped to handle payments for harried travelers.

Conductors on the Eurostar high-speed train service in Europe are using iZettle chip and PIN mobile card readers to accept payments from passengers seeking an upgrade in travel class.

German smart card testing company Comprion will use a robotic arm to simulate use cases of Near Field Communication technology, which is used in some contactless and mobile payment schemes.

Swedish pharmacy chain Apoteksgruppen will launch SEQR, Seamless' mobile wallet.

VeriFone reported a loss in the fiscal fourth quarter, but beat its internal guidance, and is touting new mobile payments initiatives as a way to improve performance in the future.

PayPal has purchased StackMob, which provides a development platform for mobile payments.

As payment companies add more mobile applications to accept transactions and speed processing, authentication will become more complex, says Todd Wilkinson, CEO of Datacard, which plans to bolster its identity technology for government and financial services clients via its acquisition of Entrust.

Discover Financial Services has begun testing a mobile payment system using biometric technology at its Riverwoods, Ill., headquarters.