Payment processing

Intuit's 2012 New Year resolution for its GoPayment card reader was to take it around the world. It did so in bookend fashion.

Like many New Year's resolutions, this one got off to a great start and then languished. Intuit started the year by offering its GoPayment reader in Canada. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company's next significant international expansion was last week's push into the UK market with a pilot program called Intuit Pay.

Cheap travel and social media continue to connect people all over the world. Companies focusing on e-commerce and payments gateways could see success as the world becomes more globalized by helping merchants handle payments from those who want to spend beyond their borders.

Square and Lemon, two companies that offer mobile wallets on Apple's iPhone handsets, have updated their apps to work with Apple's Passbook wallet.

Square, the mobile-payments startup founded by Jack Dorsey, is giving small merchants the ability to sell gift cards to shoppers on the go, stepping up competition with eBay’s PayPal business.

Aiming to make the shopping experience less painful, mobile point-of-sale platform QThru launched an app that lets consumers bypass checkout lines and pay with their smartphones.

If large retailers felt a need to create their own mobile commerce brand through the Merchant Customer Exchange to lessen customer confusion and control transaction data, then smaller retailers must also feel overwhelmed with all of the mobile payment and commerce choices available.Starting Dec. 10, San Francisco-based CardFree hopes to address that problem as a new company helping merchants develop their own custom-branded mobile commerce tools.

In the latest intersection of social media and financial services, “The End of Money” author David Wolman is selling digital copies of his book on Twitter for four days.

Apple introduced its Passbook app — a wallet that stores other mobile wallets — alongside the iPhone 5 in September. Three months later, has Passbook revolutionized mobile payments? Or is it starving from lack of support?

Capital Access Network, Inc., a small-business finance provider, has named an advisory board to guide the launch and growth of its latest offering to small businesses, CapTap.

Merchant Warehouse, a Boston-based ISO, has certified Combase USA as an integrated partner on the Merchant Warehouse Genius ITX Customer Engagement Platform.

If prepaid card providers want to be taken seriously, please, please, please ditch your celebrity partners.

U.S. Bank in Minneapolis has committed to becoming the first large U.S. bank to offer mobile bill payment in the manner of mobile check deposit—letting users pay a bill by simply taking a picture of it with the camera on their smartphone or tablet.

Online payments provider Optimal Payments Ltd. established the foundation for expanding its payment gateways to U.S. merchants and prepaid business in Europe with separate deals announced this week.

Payment Alliance International, a Louisville, Ky.-based ISO and independent ATM supplier, is working with Cash Connect, a supplier of cash vault services, to offer vault cash and cash forecasting.

Discover Financial Services said that its board has approved a change in the company’s fiscal yearend from Nov. 30 to Dec. 31 of each year.

Clearent's new application status report gives ISOs and agents insight into the status of merchant applications.

Financial Transaction Services has acquired Dependable Payment Processing and Discount Payment Processing two affiliated, Pittsburgh-based companies collectively known as DPP that provide electronic payment processing services.

Before the mobile card reader phenomenon took off, it was unlikely that a small-business owner could walk into a nearby store, pay $10 and walk out minutes later with the ability to accept card payments. Today, mobile payment devices are competing for shelf space with a growing number of major retailers.

Isis, mobile-pay venture formed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, has signed two deals that would allow consumers to use its Near Field Communication-based mobile wallet at vending machines that accept cashless payments.

Banks have at times been urged to design their own wallets instead of working with third parties — but going it alone may not always be the best approach.