Mobile payments

Mark Jamison, who joined Capital One Financial Corp. in January as a managing vice president to help start up and lead the institution’s new Digital Innovation lab, has spent the past year building a staff of about 10 workers, many of whom have a combination of technology and startup expertise.

The nature of security threats against banks continues to change as fraudsters quickly refresh their efforts against digital and mobile banking.

Google next year plans to expand its application program interfaces to make it easier for third parties such as Groupon, merchants and banks to interact with the Google Wallet, according to Rob von Behren, co-founding engineer for Google Wallet.

Two years after launching its first version of mobile banking, U.S. Bancorp has upgraded the service by integrating it with online banking and expanding its remote deposit check capture offering to include more devices.

South Korea’s telecommunication regulator is partnering with mobile-phone operators and card networks in a pilot to test a Near Field Communication-based mobile-payment system on the country’s busiest shopping street.

Retail shoppers who download a Shopkick Inc. mobile application on their smartphones to earn rewards points, or “kicks,” by walking into a store now may earn extra points by paying for purchases with a Visa-branded credit or debit card, Visa announced Nov. 21.

International funds-transfer providers have begun to acknowledge that most consumers in their remittance-heavy target markets use mobile phones as a primary tool. As such, services that require visits to a physical location or access to a personal computer are unlikely to catch on, some insiders say.

Isis has had a big week, as 45 partners of the GSM Association mobile operator trade group agreed to support the joint venture’s preferred payments model: Near Field Communication that uses SIM cards used in many mobile phones.

As major U.S. cities with complex transportation systems explore converting to an electronic fare-collection structure that would accept open-loop contactless cards, mobile payments are becoming a factor in future planning.

More consumers might try making mobile payments if more large merchants supported them, new survey data suggest.

3G Direct Pay Ltd. has signed agreements with telecommunication operators Safaricom Ltd. and Airtel Ltd. to provide immediate transaction settlements for the two African companies’ funds-transfer services, the e-commerce firm announced Nov. 16.

Mobile-payment proponents let out a collective groan when Apple Inc.’s latest iPhone 4S lacked a Near Field Communication chip.

Like a pop star who sells more records posthumously, the Google Checkout payment service may prove most beneficial to Google after it is phased out.

Visa Europe plans to develop more loyalty programs for card issuers and merchants through its investment in data-analytics firm Beyond Analysis, the company announced Nov. 15.

Can using multiple branding terms to describe a payment process help an issuer to achieve its own brand loyalty and clarify its product message, or would doing so confuse customers?

Some analysts may question the viability of mobile-payments applications, but MocaPay Inc. is making some changes to help them along.

This story has been updated from its original version.

M-via Inc. has rolled out a service called Boom designed to provide immigrants with a low-cost, safe alternative to high-fee funds-transfer services, the mobile-payment network provider announced Nov. 15.

Vendors’ smart card shipments could reach 7 billion next year, up 16.7% from 6 billion this year, fueled primarily by strong smart card growth in Latin America and China, vendor trade group Eurosmart announced Nov. 15 at the Cartes & IDentification conference in Paris.

The Central Bank of Nigeria reportedly is in talks with the Nigerian Postal Services to use of the bank’s branches as outposts to promote mobile payments.