Square Appointments, the company's latest fee-based product, is the first in its lineup that can be used by merchants who do not also use Square to accept payments.

When Westpac New Zealand recently took its Google Glass app on a road show to branches up and down the country, customer reactions took the bankers by surprise.

First Data and LocalVox are joining forces to provide a marketing technology platform for small and medium-sized businesses.

Mobile point of sale providers claim to serve the merchants that are too small for card acceptance: the gardeners, the babysitters, the flea market sellers. But this image is quickly fading as vendors pursue larger merchants, causing the upstart mPOS players to increasingly resemble the incumbents.

As Powa begins integrating its new point of sale system with vendor partners, the company expects its experience with EMV-chip acceptance to be a selling point.

As consumers warm to the idea of using their phones to make payments and manage accounts, they are flocking to merchant apps to do so. Instead of using one unified wallet, a shopper's phone may be stuffed with any of these payment-capable programs.

BOSTON — The significant amount of time that consumers spend using mobile applications demands that financial institutions develop new marketing techniques, according to research company Aite Group.

Wearable computing is suddenly in style. Only a few banks and payment companies offer wristbands, smartwatch apps or Google Glass technology, but those that do are getting valuable feedback from consumers.

Fair Isaac Co. revealed Thursday that its revamped credit score model will not weigh medical debt as heavily as previous versions, a key change given that medical debt accounts for nearly half of all unpaid collections on consumers' credit reports.

Virtual Piggy's Oink, a payment platform for teens, will become a payment option for users of Smilegate, a Korean gaming company.

Square is the latest technology company to launch a "bug bounty" program, which rewards volunteer hackers for finding security flaws and bringing them to Square's attention.

LAS VEGAS — Without specifically being the conference theme, technology and the role it will play at CUs was a major component of the National Association of Federal Credit Unions recent annual convention here.

Gemalto NV, a developer of software and chips that make transactions more secure, agreed to buy data-protection company SafeNet Inc. for $890 million in cash to bolster its offerings against threats such as hacking.

The EMV liability shift is a little over a year away, yet many merchants are unprepared for chip card acceptance. Recent data breaches have increased consumer awareness of card security issues.

Many mobile payments vendors pile on features to set themselves apart, but Push for Pizza has a different philosophy. It lets consumers purchase a pizza, and that's it.

It's hard to design a Disney's "Frozen" cake with a cash register, but it works like magic with a tablet, according to Dallas-area Society Bakery.

Banks and other lenders appear to be waiting on a regulatory signal from the Federal Housing Finance Agency before approving loans for borrowers with less than stellar credit profiles.

NXT-ID is working with Joey Fatone, former member of the boy band N*Sync, to kick off a series of celebrity endorsements for its biometric Wocket wallet.

Visa has launched a new service called Visa Transaction Advisor, which is designed to help U.S. gas stations identify higher-risk credit and debit card transactions at the pump.

Credit unions are on alert but also taking a wait-and-see approach following news that a gang of Russian hackers have amassed 1.2 billion sets of user names and passwords.