Retailers

When Starbucks Corp came to market in January 2011 with its mobile payments app, there had yet to be a retailer or foodservice operator that had gained much traction with the newfangled idea of a consumer using a mobile phone to make an in-store purchase.

Square Inc. has purchased food delivery company, Caviar, in a move to add non-payment features to its mobile payment and ordering system.

Roam, a Boston-based unit of Ingenico, has begun offering its mobile payment services on Leapfactor, a business software platform.

Banks and payment service providers face increasing competition today in onboarding new merchants. For many of them, the merchant onboarding process is very time-consuming, inflexible and costly.

First Data Corp. has agreed to buy Gyft Inc., which sells digital gift cards, in a move to advance the Atlanta-based processor's mobile payment offerings.

Heartland Payment Systems plans to bolster its existing services to college campuses by acquiring TouchNet Information Systems Inc. for $375 million.

Square plans to offer a version of its mobile card reader that can read EMV-chip cards, but the added security may come at a cost.

The Justice Department's legal case against American Express will not benefit consumers and will weaken competition, said Jeff Campbell, executive vice president and CFO of American Express.

Amazon.com, which just launched its own smartphone, may be nearing the launch of a mobile card reader that would work like Square's device, according to reports. Such a move would complement the company's many recent payment initiatives.

Zing is releasing an iPad app that leverages Web hosted technology to access a large selection of business functions through the point of sale.

Americans love giving and receiving gift cards, whether for their favorite restaurant, shop, or even home improvement store.

Happy Belly Curbside Kitchen, which operates out of food trucks, is planning to become a sit-down restaurant within the next year and is relying on mobile point of sale technology to make the transition.

Apple may have to place more emphasis on the iPad's capabilities as mobile point of sale devices to help it recover from a small but sharp decline in tablet sales.

San Francisco-based Pose, one of the many companies in the cloud-based mobile point of sale market, aims to differentiate itself by eliminating its $49 monthly subscription fee.

The Justice Department's Operation Choke Point isn't really about combatting fraud, says Jason Oxman, CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association. Federal regulators simply don't like high-risk merchants, such as payday lenders and guns dealers, he says.

Cardfree, a mobile payments provider run by several of the people who designed the successful Starbucks mobile payment app, is using cloud-based technology to simplify the process of deploying its technology as it eyes international markets.

Mobile point of sale provider Appetize is targeting entertainment venues and music festivals, a niche that's often a testing ground for payments technology.

Getting retailers to add mobile payments – or even ban credit cards in favor of mobile – is not impossible. But it just might be easier to get merchants on board with mobile if they haven't even accepted their first payment.

More merchants are interested in accepting payments on tablets and phones, and they have many choices of providers. What are banks and vendors doing to set themselves apart? (Image: ShutterStock)

Powa is reaching out to individual software vendors around the world in an attempt to accelerate integration of its point of sale tools with local mobile apps.