Online payments

Equipment leasing company TimePayment is adding a new Web calculator to improve vendors’ ability to manage payments for business equipment, as well as extend sales by optimizing renters’ budgets.

Monitise is offering its payments and mobile banking products to more than 2,600 credit unions through a partnership with Card Services for Credit Unions, a credit union card processing and payment services association.

Braintree is viewing consumer purchasing behavior at multiple merchants to improve fraud mitigation.

With all the various payment methods now available to consumers shopping online, more than 80% still prefer to use cash for online purchases of £10 (U.S. $15.55) or less, according to a survey by a U.K.-based online cash payments provider.

It appears Google may not be satisfied with the prospects of consumers only wearing its Glass headsets and using its mobile wallet on Android-powered smartphones.

In an effort to shield merchants looking to expand into new markets, PayPal will launch an expanded seller protection policy for the Asia Pacific region on Oct. 11.

Citibank has agreed to pay $55,000 to settle a complaint by the Connecticut attorney general that the bank was aware of a security flaw in its online banking service that resulted in hackers obtaining payment card data and stealing about $2.7 million.

Microsoft's planned acquisition of Nokia's handset division is designed to bolster its position as a hardware manufacturer and solidify a mobile platform for its Windows operating system. But the move may also boost the tech giant's payments aspirations.

Visa has made several changes in its management structure, including the expansion of Bill Gajda’s duties.

Sony Corp. now allows owners of the PlayStation 3 video game console to charge content purchases to their mobile phone bills with U.S. wireless carriers.

Microsoft Corp. and American Express Co. are vying to take an equity stake in Foursquare Labs Inc., according to people with knowledge of the discussions.

Online and mobile payments processor WePay's has seen the number of developers using its application programming interface (API) grow by 284% in the past year.

Twitter Inc. hired Nathan Hubbard, the former president of Ticketmaster, as its first head of commerce, part of a push to enable shopping via short postings on its social website.

Virtual Piggy and American Express are trying to win the attention of gamers by offering them prizes in their favorite online games — but players only get the prizes if they change the way they pay.

Convenience for the receiver will ultimately drive mass adoption of P2P payments and give financial institutions that deploy this service a competitive advantage.

BitPay Inc., a Bitcoin payment gateway for online merchants, has created a simplified interface for consumers and added several plugins to encourage more merchants to accept the virtual currency without writing new code.

Facebook shocked the payments industry during its IPO when it revealed it already got 15% of its revenue from payments. The social network has also proven a fertile ground to other companies that have figured out how to incorporate Facebook's platform into their own offerings.

Payment processor Mercury Payment Systems is collaborating with PayPal to allow Mercury's software developers, resellers and 80,000 mostly local merchant clients to accept PayPal payments in stores.

As check registers and passbooks fade into obscurity for a growing number of bank customers, Realex seeks to further modernize payments by putting a human face on accounts.

Recognition by a market-based standards organization such as ISO, in the form of a three-letter code, would set the stage for increasing market depth and liquidity of bitcoin trading — in turn facilitating overall consumer and merchant adoption.