Swedish mobile payment company Seamless has introduced its SEQR mobile wallet in Belgium in collaboration with bpost bank, with an initial deployment at Belgian McDonald’s locations.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) has proposed allowing Bitcoin to be accepted as contributions for federal candidates in its draft guidance.

U.S. Bank has launched a travel payments engine that provides unique identifiers for each transaction instead of a centralized billing umbrella.

Even if it takes the payments industry months to respond to Google's use of Host Card Emulation, which simulates the signal from a Near Field Communication chip, the technology is a potential game changer.

Ripple Labs has secured $3.5 million in additional funding to fuel the development of its digital currency network.

Heartland Payment Systems will be a distributor of American Express Merchant Financing, a program that allows small businesses to obtain credit based on annual card processing volume.

Google Inc. sent a few tremors through the payments industry when announcing its newest Android operating system can perform contactless payments without high-level access to NFC hardware. No one could blame SimplyTapp CEO Doug Yeager if he were cheering Google on from the sidelines.

Banks may soon bear more responsibility for raising red flags about the conduct of businesses that use the automated clearing house payments network.

More small merchants are starting to comply with the Payment Card Industry security standards, which describe how to protect card data, but many merchants still do not have an incident response plan in case of a data breach.

Former First Data CFO Cheryl King will assume the same position at PaySpan, a health care payment automation company.

Consumers are increasingly jumping form one channel to another when shopping and paying, pressuring issuers and other payment companies to simultaneously accommodate older plastic-card models alongside the Web and mobile commerce.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island (BCBSRI) has purchased technology from ACI Worldwide to support integrated mobile, Web, interactive voice response, call center and electronic lockbox payment options.

Chip-testing provider Fime has developed an infrastructure and laboratory for Discover's contactless D-Payment Application (D-PAS) products.

Optimal Payments Plc and Channel 1 Media are bringing online and mobile payments to fans of professional sports teams in North America.

SaaS-based technology provides a blended approach to remittance processing that enables financial institutions to outsource infrastructure responsibilities, while retaining the management of transaction processing, bank deposits and receivable updates.

Hybrid PayTech World Inc. is offering programs to allow application developers to incorporate the company’s multi-operating-system payments technology.

Requiring customers to sign up for online banking before they can enroll in mobile could deter would-be digital customers from some transactions.

Merchants and payment vendors who never change the default password in sensitive systems are getting fresh attention from the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.

Visa Inc. has expanded the role of French secure-chip testing expert Fime, which will support the card network's mobile payment application testing.

Rabobank plans to deploy Near Field Communication-based mobile payments in the Netherlands.