A year after eBay bought mobile ad network WHERE, it’s ready to show how it will put the Boston startup to work. WHERE will become PayPal Media Network, as it moves beyond serving location-based mobile ads to offering inventory across eBay’s different online properties. Read more »
Even with the threat of PayPal looming, Square is seeing no slow down. The company told Bloomberg Wednesday that its annualized rate of processed transactions is now up to $5 billion, up from $4 billion a month ago Read more »
Chirpify, a payment platform that uses Twitter to conduct transactions, announced it has raised $1.3 million in a Series A round and is finding good traction from Fortune 500 companies. It is also expanding the platform to include the sale of digital goods. Read more »
Media issues like advertising and discovery along with commerce dominated the activity in social and real-time Web technologies during the first quarter. Google raised some hackles, Facebook responded to demands from traditional advertisers, and Yahoo got a new chief executive. Read more in the full report. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Smartphone sales surged both in the U.S. and worldwide, carriers struggled to cope with the ever-increasing consumption of mobile data, and the fight for spectrum remained front and center in the first quarter. Our latest quarterly wrap-up analyzes these trends and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Hyperlocal mobile advertising is at a critical juncture: Leading analysts predict that mobile ad spending will increase by more than five times between 2011 and 2015. But what are the forces at play, and how effective are HyLoMo ads? Read more at GigaOM Pro »
PayPal is organizing its payments products into one service for small businesses called PayPal Payments that is meant to provide an array of tools for online, in-person and mobile payments. It takes what PayPal has done online and marries it with its mobile and in-store tools. Read more »
While Square has been known for its credit card reading dongle, the company is showing even more attention to its payment app, which is being relaunched today as Pay with Square. The mobile wallet app holds the future for Square and its bid to remake payments. Read more »
PayPal Here, the payment giant’s new Square-like payment system, is a solid competitor but won’t take down Square immediately. But with PayPal’s assets and larger strategy to win over real-world payments, it’s got a shot to overtake its rivals. That is if it can execute. Read more »
Bloomberg is confirming our earlier report on PayPal’s plans to announce a Square-like mobile card reader. The new reader will be a blue triangle device designed by Yves Behar. And PayPal will charge a fee of 2.7 percent on transactions, undercutting Square. Read more »
PayPal’s plans to announce a solution for small businesses at an event this Thursday includes a mobile payment dongle that would compete against Square and others, according to sources we’ve talked to. The dongle will allow small business owners to process credit card swipes. Read more »
I’ve seen a lot of things at South by Southwest, but no mobile payments. I haven’t seen a single person pay for something using their phone, nor a merchant who accepts it. No one is even talking about it. But there are plenty of demos. Read more »
PayPal hasn’t done much to overhaul the consumer experience of its digital wallet. But the company is poised to launch a redesigned experience, which it will provide a sneak preview of next week at South by Southwest in advance of a big launch this summer. Read more »
Payment start-up Clover is trying to radically cut down the time and steps it takes to check-out at retail sites from mobile devices, making it about as simple as an iTunes transaction. Clover today is releasing SDKs for native iOS and Android apps and mobile websites. Read more »
PayPal is making its debut in restaurants and bars with a new partnership with Tabbedout, which lets people pay their tabs using an app. Tabbedout users will able to add PayPal as a payment option alongside existing options for credit and debit cards. Read more »
Mobile deals combine location-aware discounts with mobile marketing campaigns. What are the largest pitfalls in this promising space, though? Privacy and security issues must be addressed to assure consumers their purchases are secure and their location is being closely guarded. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
American Express last year launched its Serve payment system taking on PayPal head on. Now, it’s following PayPal’s move to enable personal payments through Facebook with the launch of a Serve Facebook app, that allows users to pay each other back for free without leaving Facebook. Read more »
Online-payments processor WePay has added a new feature to enable its users to quickly and easily create invoices to bill clients. With its “commerce-in-a-box” platform, WePay claims it can help businesses start creating and sending invoices in under a minute. Read more »
With new products from a variety of players like Google and Isis comes a potentially confusing year as the term “mobile wallet” gets thrown around repeatedly. What exactly is the “mobile wallet”? Here are some important definitions for those looking to make a move in the space. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Boku up until now has been known for enabling carrier billing for online goods. But the San Francisco payment start-up is leaping into the physical world with the launch of a new white label offering for carriers that will include in-store payments. Read more »
Zipmark, which leverages the existing check-processing infrastructure to create a digital payment system, is opening up its platform to developers. It’s also poised to release an iPhone app next month, enabling consumers to pay bills and make transactions from their phone. Read more »
Exclusive: Ingk Labs, an IP accelerator in New York City, has purchased payment platform ORCA Inc. and will use it to power a new PayPal competitor called Payz. Ingk Labs is ramping its efforts to rescue and accelerate IP and put it to work in start-ups. Read more »
The mobile payments industry can learn a lot from Starbucks, which has seen tremendous success with its year-old payment app for iPhone and Android. But very few players can match Starbucks’ brand recognition or customer demographics, and no one should expect to replicate its success. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Chirpify, a Portland, Oregon, startup, is unveiling its Twitter commerce platform today, an all-in-one tool that taps PayPal and allows users to monetize their tweets. The company said it’s the first one to turn Twitter into a direct sales channel. Read more »
If you’re like many of us, you’re already thinking over some New Year’s resolutions that will make you a better “you” in 2012. But how are the tech industries’ thought leaders approaching the new year? We asked 12 of them for their resolutions. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Companies such as Google, PayPal, Facebook and Microsoft have teamed up to create a standard to help boost email security. They are part of a working group to create the DMARC standard, which will help cut down on the number of phishing attacks. Read more »
MasterCard is rolling out the first trial of its QkR mobile application, which allows people to interact and initiate payments via QR codes, NFC tags and other technologies. It is allowing Australian movie goers to order and pay for food from their seat. Read more »
Losing your phone is never fun. But losing your wallet is much worse, and that’s one argument where those trying to roll the mobile-payments… Read more at paidContent »
Home Depot announced it has acquired online home services marketplace Redbeacon. Combined with Home Depot’s recent partnership with PayPal on its new in-store payment system, it’s another reminder that brick-and-mortar retailers are having to look to Silicon Valley for ways to get innovative. Read more »
PayPal has said this year will be a learning year as it rolls out its in-store payment system. But that doesn’t mean it will all be small pilot programs this year. A company spokesman told Bloomberg that it expects to be in more than 2,000 Home Depot stores by March. Read more »
From SOPA to Microsoft’s expanded Xbox live platform to cloud-based content storage from Apple and Google, the fourth quarter in consumer electronics and media was all about the continued battle for digital living room dominance. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The fourth quarter may have lacked a dominating big-event product announcement like Q3’s Facebook platform extension or Q2’s unveiling of Google+, but the NewNet world continued to buzz along. In the battle for mind share, everyone wanted to be a platform. Meanwhile, consumer and social technologies continued to gain momentum, and new vehicles for content and service discovery presented both challenges and opportunities for NewNet companies. And it is hard to ignore the overcrowded but growing world of daily deals. This quarterly report analyzes these trends and others, and it also provides a near-term outlook of trends, technologies and companies to watch in 2012. Companies mentioned in the report include Amazon, Facebook and Socialcast. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The consumer draw of free apps over paid apps has been well-documented, and so has the rise of in-app payments as a route to making money fr… Read more at paidContent »
PayPal is lining up deals with payment solution providers to help quickly scale its upcoming in-store payment system. It has struck an agreement with Ingenico, whose point of sale terminals will soon be able to handle PayPal transactions. Read more »
EBay’s mobile business is growing so fast, it doesn’t even know how to predict what to expect months into the future. It’s now predicting it will do $8 billion in gross merchandise value and PayPal will do $7 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012. Read more »
PayPal is taking a big step forward with its in-store payment system by partnering with AJB Software Designs, which helps connect the point of sale terminals at many top retailers to payment processors and financial institutions. AJB is in use by 20 percent of top retailers. Read more »
It’s often difficult to separate what will shape the future of payments from what is just hype. PayPal’s Scott Dunlap focuses on the “innovation clusters” to get past the hype and see where mobile payment technology will be taking us in the near future. Read more »
The emergence of inexpensive sensors is the singularly most exciting thing about the world in many ways. A big part of our life is to make sense of it all before it’s too late. Read more »
The markets didn’t punish Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) today when it announced it would appoint a payments technology specialist, Scott Thompson, as i… Read more at paidContent »
Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) faced a pretty big whack of upheavals in 2011 — not least of which was the none-too-quiet departure of their outspoken f… Read more at paidContent »
