Mobile payments

Mobile payments company Clinkle has hired Barry McCarthy to be its chief operating officer.

Irish financial services group Fexco and BNP Paribas are acquiring Flashiz, a two-year old Luxembourg-based mobile payment company.

The coveted "Millennial" generation of consumers ages 18 to 34 is central to the success of any new payments technology – but this group also has a wide range of financial goals that make it hard to target with a one-size-fits-all product.

Just as Square invented a plug-in device to bypass the gatekeepers of the payments industry, banks may be able to turn the tables with a plug-in device designed to bypass the gatekeepers of the mobile industry.

Visa and MasterCard have aggressively worked to establish their V.me and MasterPass wallets since launching both products within the past year, and both companies are trying to learn from their past efforts in e-payments.

OnBudget seeks to build customer retention of daily expense prepaid cards by incorporating personal financial management tools that digitize the "envelope budgeting system" popular among consumers.

Although its third quarter net income dropped 7% year-over-year, Discover Financial Services remains confident in the opportunities it has invested in for the future.

Consumers are increasingly jumping form one channel to another when shopping and paying, pressuring issuers and other payment companies to simultaneously accommodate older plastic-card models alongside the Web and mobile commerce.

There is a surge of activity in person-to-person payments, with the biggest banks going head-to-head with technology giant Google and other significant rivals.

American Express Co. is working with VeriFone Systems to allow consumers to redeem membership rewards to pay for rides in New York City taxis.

Square's new P2P service, Square Cash, is meant to be so straightforward that you don't need an app to use it — but Square published an app anyway. The Square Cash app joins a growing suite of Square apps for merchants and consumers.

Flint has released an Android version of its swipeless mobile card acceptance product, which relies on the smartphone's embedded camera to scan an image of a card to accept payments.

Udi's, which operates a group of cafes and pizza establishments in the Denver area, just launched a customized mobile payments program with the goal of obtaining the data that is normally invisible to it when patrons pay with credit and debit cards.

GlassPay, a new Google Glass app from RedBottle Design LLC, allows consumers to make purchases with bitcoins, a prominent digital currency.

Homeland Stores, a grocery store chain based in Oklahoma City, wanted to digitize its plastic loyalty card without having a vendor's brand get in the way.

Mobile software developers increasingly use common platforms for payments and other functions. And many of those developers rely on Braintree, a company eBay is purchasing for $800 million.

MasterCard Inc. has certified On Track Innovations Ltd.’s Wave Near Field Communication device, which plugs into a phone's headphone jack to allow consumers to make contactless mobile payments.

If independent sales organizations aren't willing to shift their business models in the coming years, they'll go extinct in a payments industry bustling with aggressive, agile startups that skip the middleman and go directly to the merchant.

Mobile point of sale processor payworks and European hospitality technology provider Orderman are designing mobile terminals for chip-and-PIN cards.

Square has officially launched its person-to-person payment system, Square Cash, which lets debit card users send funds by typing an email.