Payment processing

Square's Jack Dorsey sparked a price war over Japanese credit-card transactions with SoftBank Corp.'s Masayoshi Son. Entrepreneurs like Yukiko Kurano are the biggest winners so far.

Software updates have largely resolved the glitches that have marred the rollout of the new Ventra contactless fare system on Chicago's famed "L" trains, and the process of applying the same updates throughout the city's bus fleet will be completed this week, Chicago Transit Authority officials said.

Jennifer Schulz is the new group president of Experian's vertical markets group, which includes the automotive, public sector and healthcare businesses in North America.

Thailand's state-owned telecommunications provider TOT says it will launch a Near Field Communication-based mobile pay service in the country next year.

For Cyriac Roeding, CEO and co-founder of shopkick, the marriage of virtual and physical shopping has never as close as it is now.

The Federal Reserve Board says it followed a proper system for establishing debit interchange caps and fully abided by the Durbin Amendment's requirement for merchants to have two unaffiliated networks to choose from for routing debit transactions.

The Fed's vision of a vastly improved payments system within 10 years is getting a chilly reception from a group representing the nation's largest banks.

China's central bank barred financial institutions from handling Bitcoin transactions, moving to regulate the virtual currency after an 89-fold jump in its value sparked a surge of investor interest in the country.

Billing outsourcer BillTrust has developed new invoice technology that uses streamlined processing and dispute resolution to boost businesses payments automation, a segment that has traditionally lagged consumer payments in reducing paper processing.

Clinkle, the payments startup that's generated financial backing from Silicon Valley investors and rampant speculation about its technology model, has hired a pair of Web technology veterans as it ramps up for a launch next year.

Several Canadian banks have taken on the challenge of managing and protecting their customers' usernames and passwords across banking and government sites. U.S. banks are invited to join a similar pilot starting in the U.S.

Airtag has added PayPal as a payment option for consumers using the KFC Fast Track mobile wallet to order and purchase food in advance at the fast food chain's U.K. restaurants.

CO-OP Financial Services is upgrading its Sprig digital wallet to allow broader person-to-person payments, and is also adding mobile credit and debit card control and alert features.

Electronic payments provider ACI Worldwide named two new executives to its leadership team and is also establishing a new South America headquarters in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

With a goal of speeding up delivery of Near Field Communication-enabled handsets, China Mobile Limited has purchased EMV chip-card testing capabilities from Fime, as well as received a license to begin operating a new, fourth-generation wireless network.

Coinplug, a startup Bitcoin merchant services and trading platform being developed for the Korean market, has received $400,000 in funding from Cupertino, Calif.-based Silverblue Inc.

Joe Proto, a payments executive and founder of several technology companies, is the new board chairman at prepaid card marketer The SpendSmart Co.

Mobile technology builder C-Sam has created a version of its mobile app development platform that's preconfigured with MasterPass specifications for financial institutions and processors to more easily build custom versions of MasterCard's digital wallet.

Google Wallet has undergone several major revisions since it launched and while the issues solved with its latest iteration were among its biggest hurdles, it's still too soon to declare a winner in the mobile wallet race.

If retail stores seemed a little less crowded over the holiday weekend, tablets or smartphones are likely to blame, as the volume of e-commerce payments made via mobile devices surged during what some are now calling the "Cyber Five" shopping days — from Thanksgiving Day through Cyber Monday.