Mobile payments

Mitek Systems Inc., a provider of remote-deposit check capture, has ridden the wave of mobile banking to an eight-fold increase in its stock price and a relisting of its shares this week.

In the latest phase of Citi’s efforts to hire leaders from the retail world (including Tracey Weber from Travelocity and Frank Eliason from Comcast), the bank has hired Omar Khan, CTO at Samsung Mobile, to head mobile initiatives on a global basis. Khan is said to have led Samsung’s moves into the Android space.

Many consumers don't know what Near Field Communication is, but the services the technology enables are becoming quite popular. That puts an onus on mobile payments projects that use NFC to move beyond disputes over revenue and other issues.

While many consumers may not know what near-field communication is, the services it enables are becoming quite popular, putting an onus on mobile payments projects in regions as varied as North America, Germany and Turkey to move beyond tech and revenue disputes to deliver a workable model for point of sale transactions executed by smartphones.

PayPal revolutionized how consumers pay for goods online. It's not about to be usurped by the mobile payments movement.

EBay Inc. is building on the mobile payments strategy of its PayPal unit with its $240 million deal to buy Zong Inc., a company that lets consumers charge purchases of digital goods to their wireless phone bills.

Anyone who owns a smart phone knows new apps and program updates are posted every day and even the handsets themselves evolve every year or so.

The total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods as well as for money transfers and Near Field Communication-enabled transactions will grow to $670 billion by 2015, up from $240 billion in 2011, according to a new Juniper Research study.

The emerging U.S. mobile-payments market could face some resistance from consumers who are worried about fraud, new research suggests.

Fresh off moving its Citi Ventures unit to the Bay Area to get close to the latest payments tech buzz, Citi’s investing in mobile payments firm Billing Revolution.

Online and mobile-payment startup Dwolla Corp. has been building a payment network called Grid that company executives believe to be more secure than MasterCard Worldwide’s and Visa Inc.’s card networks.

Bill-payment processor Tio Networks Corp. is making headway with its mobile bill-payment application.

In its first major play to connect its mobile-payments service with social media, Starbucks Coffee Co. on June 30 unveiled a mobile-payment application it developed in-house that consolidates the features of previous apps with links to enable users to send Starbucks gift cards via Facebook.

States’ efforts to rein in fly-by-night companies are starting to have an effect on some payments startups’ operations.

The marketplace is beginning to take shape for mobile card readers with the June 29 disclosure that VeriFone Systems Inc. plans to introduce a card-reading accessory for tablet computers this year.

Fiserv Inc.’s deal to buy the software vendor CashEdge Inc. narrows the field of contenders vying for dominance in the growing person-to-person payments space.

Dynamics Inc. made a splash last year with the launch of a Citigroup-issued multipurse card that has a built-in screen and keypad, but the mobile wallet systems that have been announced since then–including Google Wallet, which also has Citi’s support, duplicates all of those features.

In a move that could increase competition in Taiwan’s mobile-payments market, telecommunication operator Far EasTone Telecommunications Co. has declared plans to begin offering payment services by the end of this year.

Mobile-payment initiatives from Google Inc., Isis and PayPal Inc. appear to be motivating investment firms to take a closer look at the companies that will help enable such transactions at brick-and-mortar locations.

Mobile-payments startup Square Inc.’s $100 million venture-capital avalanche announced June 29 could mean that the company’s transaction volume is gaining significant momentum despite its lack of profits, one analyst contends.