Many of Square bigger rivals are hoping live customer support can help them compete against the startup. Square doesn’t offer a customer service line and handles questions primarily through email, forums, videos and a Twitter feed. Read more »
Groupon has joined the mobile payment race with Groupon Payments, which provides a mobile payment service similar to Square. It’s part of a larger effort to build up its merchants services tool and create a new business outside of daily deals. Read more »
Tabbedout, which allows restaurants to offer mobile payments to their customers, is now providing a mobile SDK so businesses with a mobile app can easily integrate Tabbedout payments instead of relying on Tabbedout’s app. Read more »
Square is making it official: it has raised $200 million as part of its Series D round including $25 million from Starbucks. The money will help the company to grow as it fends off more challenges from competitors and tries to expand internationally. Read more »
In the five years since the iPhone hit the market, Apple and Google have delivered more than 40 billion cumulative downloads of apps. Other sources predict the app marketplace will swell to surpass 66 billion downloads in 2016, a growth fueled by tablet, entertainment, and enterprise apps. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Isis, the joint mobile payment venture from Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, was supposed to launch in two markets this summer. But the company is delaying the roll out of the NFC-based payment system without a firm launch date to announce. Read more »
Barclaycard US is the latest card issuer to back Google Wallet. The company also backs Isis, the mobile payment joint venture between Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile, illustrating that not even the traditional banking companies know yet which mobile payment standard will be successful. Read more »
As expected, Apple passed on NFC for the iPhone 5. Apple could have provided a big boost to the technology and helped educate users on the merits of the technology. Now, it will continue to struggle to gain mainstream acceptance. Read more »
LevelUp is showing NFC some love by replacing its existing payment docks with NFC-enabled hardware. Now instead of just paying by QR code, LevelUp users can initiate payments with a tap of their phone. Read more »
VeriFone is opening up its Sail mobile payment service to developers with a new developer portal. That will allow developers to easily add Sail to their mobile apps. But it will also be a way for developers to offer their services to Sail’s business customers. Read more »
NFC in the iPhone may have to wait another year. Anandtech is concluding that the next iPhone, if it comes with a metal backing, will not be able to support an NFC antenna. Read more »
Google is talking up the potential for Google Wallet to be more than just a payment tool. Leaders want Google Wallet to be a place to store boarding passes, tickets, identification and gift cards. That was the vision all along but it may be ready soon. Read more »
PayPal is partnering with Discover to greatly expand the number of merchant locations that will be able to handle its in-store payments. Starting in April, seven million locations in the U.S. will be able to handle PayPal payments. Read more »
VeriFone’s Square competitor SAIL is showing the first integration with a third-party service. It is working with Stitch Labs to offer customers a way to merge online and offline inventory management. The integration demonstrates how SAIL will compete by being open to outside services. Read more »
Braintree, a payment processing company that serves Rovio, Uber, Fab.com and Airbnb, is paying $26.2 million to buy mobile payment startup Venmo. The deal will allow Braintree to expand on mobile payments, the fastest growing part of its business. Read more »
Mobile payment startup Square is giving small businesses an option to pay a monthly transaction fee of $275 instead of paying $2.75 per card swipe. That will save money for businesses who do more volume and will give them more predictability about their costs. Read more »
Dunkin Donuts’ first mobile app is debuting Thursday and it’s offering a way for people to pay via their iPhone or Android device. It works similar to one used by Starbucks, which has had a lot of success since it launched mobile payments. Read more »
The mobile payment market is getting even more crowded thanks to a big play by a consortium of retailers including Target, Walmart, Sears and others who are creating their own mobile wallet. The move will give them a chance to save costs and protect their data. Read more »
Some of the biggest players in the mobile payment space including the four U.S. mobile carriers, Google, Isis, VeriFone and Intuit are joining a new mobile payment committee within the Electronic Transactions Association. It’s still too early to say what this cooperation will yield. Read more »
Starbucks has seen the power of mobile payments first hand but isn’t prepared to expand its own payment efforts. But it is making a big $25 million bet on Square to be a leader in this fast growing space. Read more »
The line-up of Square rivals just got a bit longer today with the debut of GoPago Live, a mobile payment service for small businesses. GoPago’s twist is that its offering software and a tablet with 4G wireless, a receipt printer and cash drawer, all for free. Read more »
Google is opening up Google Wallet and giving users more payment options and control over security. However, while the mobile payments feature can be used at 200,000 locations today, the list of devices equipped to handle them is still very short. Read more »
Apple’s intent to acquire AuthenTec is another possible clue, in addition to its Passbook software coming this fall, and its experience running one of the most successful e-commerce sites on the planet, as to what Apple might be working on in the area of mobile payments. Read more »
UPDATED: NFC reader and software maker ViVOtech is selling off its reader business as it restructures and focuses on software. The company, which has raised $96 million to date, may have burned through too much cash waiting for NFC payments to materialize. Read more »
While Google-backed Corduro may have looked like a Square competitor at first, it’s shooting for bigger clients. It signed up a hospital and a university earlier this year and plans to keep going after big enterprise customers while still making its services available to merchants. Read more »
The Silicon Strip is coming along nicely, and although they’re mostly young and relatively unknown, Las Vegas’s startups aren’t hurting for good ideas. Some are even growing beyond their wildest dreams. Here are five of the city’s most-promising. Read more »
M-Via’s Boom service debuted last year with the goal of restructuring the way people send money to their home countries. M-Via is now getting a big endorsement from mobile operator Digicel Group, which is leading a $17 million round in the newly renamed Boom Financial. Read more »
PayPal liked Card.io so much, it not only used the startup to help it capture credit card images for its PayPal Here product, it is now buying the San Francisco startup. The team will help PayPal build out its digital wallet. Read more »
Square’s list of big name competitors is officially getting another billion dollar company. NCR Corp., the Duluth, GA maker of cash registers and ATM machines, is now launching NCR Silver, a cloud-based point of sale product aimed at small businesses. Read more »
Isis, the carrier-led mobile payment venture by Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, is preparing for its big summer debut with the release of a series of video tutorials aimed at educating users on how to use its tap-and-go system. Read more »
LevelUp, a Boston-based loyalty and payment startup, is laying down the gauntlet to other payment competitors by doing away with processing fees forever in what it calls a bid to achieve “Interchange Zero.” It will only make money from selling offers and loyalty services. Read more »
Paydiant is announcing $12 million in Series B funding led by Stage 1 Ventures, which will go toward the build out of its white-label payment and offers platform for banks and retailers. The company enables banks and merchants to add mobile payment services into existing apps. Read more »
MasterCard and Deutsche Telekom announced a partnership today that will bring NFC contactless payments to DT’s 93 million mobile customers in Europe. That puts more momentum behind NFC payments and potentially sets up 2013 as a big break-out year for contactless payments. Read more »
Mobile payment startup Square is taking on its most requested feature: unique log-ins for multiple workers. Now, the Square Card Reader app will offer unique log-ins for up to 50 employees, so a manager can have them log-in separately without getting access to the business account. Read more »
Placecast, which allows retail brands and operators to push out location-based offers, is now making its ShopAlerts technology available to mobile payment and mobile wallet providers. Retailers, operators or credit card companies with existing payment apps will be able to incorporate ShopAlerts into their apps. Read more »
VeriFone is taking its newly launched SAIL mobile payment product to Android smartphones after debuting on the iPhone last month. The move helps VeriFone better compete with Square, an early mobile payment leader and PayPal Here, which are both available on iPhones and Android. Read more »
PayPal is undertaking a big reorganization that simplifies the company’s structure around a mobile theme. It’s part of a larger effort to build a more unified experience for customers that is easier to use across the company’s different access points. Read more »
Near field communication, the wireless technology that’s forever been poised to break out, may finally get the big push it needs. Code pulled from two iPhone prototypes suggest that upcoming iPhones will have NFC controllers connected to the power management unit, according to a new report. Read more »
Mobile payment start-up Square is working to fill out its menu of services and today it’s revealing new loyalty, inventory, analytics and discovery tools for Square Register and Pay with Square, helping Square appeal to a wider number of merchants. Read more »
As a small business owner, I’m delighted the field of mobile credit card processing is opening up. I compared Verifone’s Sail and Square’s services while processing payments for my business via my iPhone and iPad. Here’s what I found. Read more »
