Payments

For a technology still in the midst of evolving, mobile payments attract an overwhelming amount of interest. Competition between payment systems is intense — as the Wall Street Journal recently noted, AngelList’s mobile payments startup roster includes more than 640 players.

Perhaps the biggest question swirling around this week's Finovate conference is: why are mobile payments still more hope than reality?

Facebook's payment system has processed $3 billion in transactions for developers, with 100 of its developers making over $1 million a year through Facebook.

Owners of Sony's PlayStation 4 video game console, which launched in November, can now use PayPal to purchase games and other media from the console's built-in PlayStation Store.

Spreedly is launching a vaulting service that allows e-commerce merchants to manage payments without using a third-party gateway provider to authorize online transactions or handle related tasks such as data security.

Intuit is in discussions to purchase bill payment company Check Inc., according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Key decision makers in the payments industry recently gathered for SourceMedia's 2014 Card Forum and Expo. They discussed the trends shaping the industry and their own strategies for surviving the challenges ahead. Here are a few highlights.

Revel Systems is offering a new accessibility bundle for its tablet-based point of sale system.

U.S. Bank's addition of "instant" person to person payments is a response to consumer expectations: If mobile payments are supposed to replace cash, they should be as fast as cash.

EBay Inc. is looking at ways it can bring Venmo's mobile person-to-person payment method and the Venmo Touch mobile purchasing system into PayPal's ecosystem, eBay executives said in a conference call to discuss first-quarter earnings.

Equifax is working with the mobile payments company Zumigo to jointly develop fraud prevention software.

MasterCard has launched its MasterPass digital wallet technology in New Zealand.

Shopify is working with payment services provider 2Checkout to allow merchants to accept payments in more currencies and regions.

Square has launched an order-ahead feature and other services to boost its appeal to brick-and-mortar merchants, but history has shown that merchants can be fickle about which features they'll pay more to use.

U.S. Bank will enable real-time person-to-person payments through Fiserv's Popmoney.

MoneyGram is working with PicomoPay to enable U.S.-based Facebook users to send funds to MoneyGram agent locations in 200 countries using PicomoPay's Facebook app.

Fleet card provider WEX plans to release an app that tells motorists where the most cost-effective gas station is based on their location rather than just showing the price of gas.

After previous tests resulted in mobile phone payments taking a little longer to complete a transaction than a contactless Oyster card, Transport for London is again trying Near Field Communication-enabled phones for payment on its rail network and Tube underground rails.

Starbucks may soon make the tools behind its successful m-commerce strategy available to other retailers.

Facebook knows that if it misuses consumer data, it will scare its users off. But the social network also knows that by keeping consumers aware of what it is doing and giving them a chance to opt out, it can fundamentally change the way advertisers such as card issuers do business.