The Bitcoin system is preparing to join the many digital payment options that fall back on a prepaid card — but is a plastic card even necessary for e-wallets supported by Bitcoin, PayPal, Amex and others?

Awareness of contactless card payments in the UK has nearly doubled in the past year, resulting in more than a million payments per month, according to research that provides plenty of food for thought for the U.S. and other countries where such cards are available.

An appeals court in Manhattan ruled that a collection agency chasing loans backed by the Education Department misled debtors by telling them their loans were not dischargeable in bankruptcy.

BATH, Me. -- Five County CU selected FairPoint Communication's carrier-grade network to offer video banking technology in the state.

Square has stolen the spotlight — after convincing Starbucks to switch to Square for processing, the mobile-payments vendor gave other merchants the option to accept cards for a flat $275 monthly fee. How can a rival mobile-pay provider compete?

PreCash Inc., which allows the underbanked to make electronic bill payments and other transactions in cash, says it now allows payments to more than 10,000 billers.

PayPal and Square allow their mobile-wallet users to pay by checking in at merchant locations with an app that transmits their photo to the merchant for authentication. With ShopKeep POS, PayPal is showcasing this feature at a New York film festival.

A common criticism of daily-deals providers such as Groupon and LivingSocial is that merchants using those services generally don't always receive return visits or sufficient data to use in designing long-term customer-loyalty plans.

Now's the time for independent sales organizations to start offering mobile-payments options to their merchant customers.

SCVNGR's LevelUp, which announced a charitable-donation option today, is not the first to spot a link between charities and mobile spending and rewards. Shopkick's mobile rewards app began life in 2009 as CauseWorld, which had a strong focus on donating any rewards earned to charities.

DeviceFidelity is relaunching its Moneto mobile wallet, and this time around it lets users transfer funds to other Moneto users' prepaid accounts.

Many companies are seeking fresh ways to use mobile phones to add functionality and security at ATMs.

FARMINGTON, N.M. – Animas FCU has selected Fiserv’s XP2 account processing solution.

WOODBURY, Minn. – Postal CU has partnered with mFoundry through its relationship with First Data to launch mobile banking to members next month.

VeriFone is making good on its original promise to open up its Square-like mobile card reader, Sail, to developers.

Google Wallet is under increasing pressure — though the mobile wallet has been in consumers' hands for over a year, Google still has fewer issuer partners than its rival Isis, and with the Merchant Customer Exchange wallet on the horizon, Google now faces competition from the very retailers it seeks to attract.

AT&T has agreed to sell Square's smartphone-based card readers in its 1,000 company-owned retail stores.

SCVNGR's LevelUp now offers an app for Windows Phone users that want to use its mobile point of sale payment system.

Consumers are less confident about both the overall U.S. economy and technology spending than a month ago but are more confident than a year ago, according to a new Index.

Adding payment acceptance to a website could be as easy as embedding a YouTube video or sharing a link on Facebook.