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Yesterday it was iZettle adding chip-and-pin capabilities — as happened earlier this month with Payleven — and partnering up with Banco Santander, and today it’s SumUp’s newfound support for American Express cards.

SumUp is still working on the technical implementation for the deal, and its merchants will start being able to take payments from AmEx cardholders in the second quarter of the year in the UK, Germany, Ireland, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Spain and Italy. Belgium and Portugal should follow, though SumUp is still in negotiations with American Express on that point.

This is not the first such firm to sign with AmEx – after all, American Express has actively invested in iZettle. However, according to SumUp, the deal means the company “will accept more types of cards in more regions than any other mobile point-of-sale technology provider worldwide”. Co-founder Stefan Jeschonnek told me SumUp has “several tens of thousands of merchants” now using its terminals, and “several thousand” are joining each week.

SumUp does have an extra trick up its sleeve, too: later this year it will be bringing out the slightly Square Wallet-ish SumUp Pay, which will let end-users pre-approve a participating merchant through an app, then pop up on that merchant’s system as soon as they walk into their shop – the idea there is to allow purchases based on a simple verbal interaction with the merchant, without the need for even taking the phone out.

And according to Jeschonnek, SumUp will be able to exploit its growing installed base of merchants to crack the classic chicken-and-egg problem associated with mobile wallet schemes:

“We’re making payments smoother today with the card reader, but we’re thinking about how things should work in the future. We are building technology to make that real-world interaction possible again… The difference this time around is that we already have a pretty large and fast-growing merchant base. For our merchants to accept SumUp Pay will be as simple as updating their app.”

He added that SumUp Pay would also provide a nifty way around Visa’s stringent authentication procedures, which have previously proved a stumbling block for the likes of iZettle, when it launches later this year.

It’s good to see companies innovating in the financial technology space, and SumUp’s focus on in-house technological development theoretically places it well there. That said, with the mobile POS wars as heated as they are in Europe right now, I would not be in the least bit surprised to see a rival try to beat SumUp to its frictionless payment goal.

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V.me is Visa’s attempt at creating a digital wallet that makes transactions easier. It allows users to pay online with a Visa or other credit card using a user name and password instead of entering a 16-digit card number and their address. V.me is available online and on mobile and will roll out to in-store point of sale next year.

Visa is relying on banking partners to help sell V.me to their 50 million customers. It has signed up deals with PNC and U.S. Bank along with about 50 other smaller banks, who will offer V.me directly to their customers. Some like PNC will offer a preloaded V.me wallet while other banks will send users to sign-up through the V.me site. Many banks will market the service through their own banking site.

V.me also has about two dozen merchants partners, including 1-800-Flowers and Shoebuy.com, Cooking.com, Rakuten Buy.com, Blue Nile and others. It’s looking to eventually target the top 250 online retailers. That would pit it against PayPal as well as other credit card rivals like American Express and MasterCard, which are also creating or building out digital wallets to make it easier to pay online.

The bigger challenge and opportunity will be in 2013, when V.me goes in store. Jennifer Schulz, global head of eCommerce for Visa, said the company is looking at employing near field communication (NFC) in certain geographies though it’s also looking at other technologies to facilitate payments. She said V.me could easily plug in other tools at the point of sale like QR codes.

V.me represents a way for Visa to go multi-channel, selling online and offline. That’s especially helpful in mobile commerce, where completing transactions can be hard. But if Visa can expand its share of in-store sales, that’s an even bigger opportunity though it will have to go up against a lot of competitors including Google Wallet, Isis, Square and many others. Visa hasn’t shared any numbers from V.me’s beta so it’s unclear how well consumers are taking to the wallet so far.

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“This will be the biggest media event we’ll cover for the year, if not in the history of Yahoo,” said Ken Fuchs, VP of global media for Yahoo.

Also read: NBC’s Olympics authentication gives you a break

With 27 reporters on the ground in London — more than double Yahoo’s allotment for the 2010 Winter Games — and 25 regional sites covering the games in 12 languages in more than 200 countries, Yahoo is expecting a global audience of more than 700 million viewers over a two-week span.

Also read: Yahoo CEO – We must be clearer about what we won’t do

“This will showcase what you can do even though you don’t own the broadcast rights,” noted Fuchs. “If you look at past Olympics, there were more [viewing] minutes generated without the ability to live stream official events.”

Of course, Yahoo isn’t publicly revealing any revenue expectations for its coverage. But its business model seems to compare favorably to that of Comcast/NBCUniversal, which is paying $4.4 billion for U.S. Olympics broadcast rights through 2020 — and already reported a $200 million loss on the 2010 Winter Games.

Also read: Shazam to ply 2nd screen app to NBC’s Olympics coverage

Here’s how Yahoo’s major Olympic sponsors are getting involved:

>> Citi is sponsoring the Yahoo Olympic Medal Count, which will be available to nationalist-minded, “USA!”-chanting medal trackers on PC and mobile platforms. Citi is also backing Sportacular, an app that allows users to get updates, stats and news on specific events.

>> Visa will back some of Yahoo’s social media elements tied to the games. (Yahoo, for example, plans to amply employ its IntoNow social TV division.)

>> Transamerica will team with Yahoo to produce a video series, Tomorrow Makers, which will offer preview coverage of the next day’s events, profiles of the participating athletes, medal predictions and other content.

>> Procter & Gamble will sponsor a wide swath of Yahoo Olympics programming at both the corporate level and for its individual brands.

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Buy.com’s 18 million customers will now see the option to enroll in V.me on check-out and login pages. They will be able to create a V.me account that’s funded from Visa, American Express, MasterCard and Discover cards. Instead of entering in their credit card information to complete a transaction, V.me users can enter in a user name and password. V.me users can also receive alerts and near-real-time notification of transactions on their Visa accounts and will eventually get personalized offers through the wallet.

This is still an early step for V.me, which got going with the launch of a developer center in November. The plan is to start in the U.S. with online commerce, with many more retailers set to support V.me in the coming weeks and months.  Eventually V.me will expand to mobile and in-store payments using near field communication. Visa Europe also announced last month that V.me would debut this fall in the UK, France and Spain.

V.me seems to be getting off to a bit of a slower start than expected. In November, Visa announced that V.me would launch in the U.S. in early 2012 after the holidays with in-store NFC payments coming later in the the year. It’s unclear when V.me will be ready for a public launch for all online retailers. The NFC roll-out will be even more complicated and will pit Visa directly against Google Wallet and Isis, the wireless carrier-led wallet initiative set to begin trials this summer in Austin and Salt Lake City. It’s also facing competition from MasterCard’s PayPass Wallet Services and American Express’ Serve platform, which will eventually both offer online, mobile and in-store payments.

This battle is starting to heat up but don’t expect this year to be decisive. There is still so much education and development that needs to happen and most consumers and merchants don’t have a clue as to which wallet they will want to use. Visa has the advantage of being the biggest credit card network and that trust will surely give it a boost in the new digital wallet wars. But there’s so much more game to be played, it’s still too early to say who will prevail.

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PayPass Wallet Services will include three components:

• The PayPass Acceptance Network will allow merchants to handle electronic payments both online and contactless using near field communications.
• PayPass Wallet gives consumers a way to pay for things using any number of credit, debit and pre-paid cards from Visa, American Express, Discover. Consumers will be able to easily check-out without having to enter in credit card and shipping information.
• PayPass APIs will show developers and partners how to connect their digital wallet into the PayPass Acceptance Network. That will allow them to take advantage of MasterCard’s check-out, authentication and security services.

American Airlines and Barnes & Noble are the first two companies which will use PayPass online as a payment option. American Airlines will also incorporate PayPass Wallet into its mobile app. The plan is to roll out PayPass Wallet Services in the third quarter, first in the U.S., Canada, UK and Australia before expanding to other countries.

Eventually, PayPass will offer a host of features for consumers such as quick balance checking before purchases, spending controls and alerts received in real time and personalized offers and loyalty programs.

This is another sign of how the credit card companies are looking beyond their traditional products and stepping up with their own digital payment services that are more open, mobile and cross channel. Visa is moving ahead with V.me, which is starting as an online payment system but will move into in-store payments using NFC. American Express introduced Serve, a kind of PayPal competitor that enables online transactions, peer-to-peer payments and carrier billing through Payfone. While PayPal, Google and the carriers along with rising start-ups like Square are trying to redefine payments in a more mobile and social world, the credit card companies are making sure they don’t fall behind and lose their relationship with consumers. As we’ve said before, a lot of these financial institutions are still in the driver’s seat in mobile payments because they have a trusted relationship with consumers.

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V.me will start as an online payment system, allowing people to pay for goods through their PC, tablet or smartphone. Consumers will be able to load various credit cards, not just Visa cards, onto the wallet and pay using a simple user name and password. The goal is to eventually make it a tool for real-world offline payments using NFC (near field communication) technology, though it’s unclear when Visa is planning on rolling that out.

“Our intention is that V.me will ultimately be able to incorporate any or all of our new payment technologies, allowing our members to deliver the best possible payments experience whether face-to-face, online or in a mobile environment,” said Mariano Dima, Executive Vice President of Product and Marketing Solutions at Visa Europe, in a statement.

Visa Europe will partner with payments processor WorldPay, which will help ensure that that the digital wallet service meets the needs of UK retailers. More banks and retail partners are expected to be announced in the future.

In November, Visa announced that V.me would launch in the U.S. in early 2012 after the holidays. But so far, there hasn’t been any indication as to when that will move forward. Visa also said it expected to add in-store payments using NFC later in 2012, but again, it’s unclear if that timeline has also slipped.

Still, it shows that Visa is moving forward on its next generation payment services and continues to advance on several fronts. It has V.me, of course but it’s also partnering with Isis and Google Wallet and has backed Square. And it’s also working on launching a big NFC payment system at the London Olympics this summer with Samsung.

As we’ve mentioned before, the credit card companies and banks are still in a very strong position in the mobile payments game because they have a very trusted relationship with consumers. And while Visa is still slow in rolling out V.me, that might not be a bad idea. It’s very early in the mobile payments game and leader Google hasn’t seen much benefit from getting out of the gates quickly.

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