Bill and Melinda Gates’ to-do list will probably put yours to shame. This year, in the Gates Foundation annual letter, the duo…
Read MoreResearch
New mobile payment contender looms as Rocket and PLDT team up
A few months before its lukewarm IPO late last year, Germany’s Rocket Internet took a $446 million investment from the Philippine Long…
Read MoreWhy Passbook could join Ping in the Apple graveyard
Apple's Passbook joins the mobile payments gold rush. But Jeff Fagel, of edo Interactive, has doubts about its viability and says until we see a system that's easier for everyone, plastic will remain king.…
Read MoreCoaster app lets you buy a drink, tip your bartender from your phone
With your credit card connected to the Coaster iOS or Android app, you can order and buy a drink and tip your bartender all from your phone without having to saunter up to the bar or flag down a server.…
Read MoreGeode iPhone case wants to replace all your credit cards
iCache is working to help people leave their wallets behind using an innovative iPhone case called Geode, that can digitize all of a user's payment cards and loyalty cards and provides a simple way to present them at checkout at all stores.…
Read MoreFacebook: Follow us to the mobile Web
Facebook is gearing up to take advantage of the mobile web and put itself at the head of a growing web app ecosystem. Today, it announced a set of initiatives that should help standardize mobile web browsers and enable better payments in mobile web apps.…
Read MoreBoku targets carriers with in-store payment system
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 MoreZipmark’s payment system looks to retire the checkbook
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 MoreObama campaign deploys Square for mobile fundraising
Square, the mobile payment acceptance tool, has gotten a big endorsement from the merchant in chief. The Obama re-election campaign said today it is equipping staff, field organizers and volunteers with Square hardware to allow them to process campaign donations from their mobile phone.…
Read MoreMasterCard starts piloting QkR mobile payment app
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 MoreCredit card scanner Card.io launches its own payment app
Card.io last year introduced its "visual swipe" technology that allowed developers to accept credit card payments by taking a picture of a card. Now, the start-up is launching a new consumer payment app for iOS and Android that allows people to receive payments using Card.io's technology.…
Read MoreVeriFone equips retailers for the future of shopping
Payment system provider VeriFone is arming its merchants and retailers with new tools to handle the evolutions in commerce. At the National Retail Federation convention this week, the company, is demonstrating how it can help merchants become more mobile, more responsive and dynamic.…
Read MoreEBay, PayPal see a very mobile future
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 MoreHow PayPal plans to scale its in-store payment system
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 MoreRIM hopes content sharing can be NFC’s gateway drug
What consumers need to understand and embrace NFC is a gateway drug. And that is not likely to be mobile payments, said Andrew Bocking, Vice President, Handheld Software Product Management at RIM. It's more likely to be personal content sharing through NFC-enabled phones.…
Read More4 payment industry predictions for 2012
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 MoreDonahoe to lead PayPal for now, maybe forever
PayPal president Scott Thompson's departure for Yahoo highlights the changing face of eBay, which increasingly looks at PayPal as its crown jewel. And who better to safeguard that than eBay CEO John Donohoe, who has announced he will take over PayPal as interim president.…
Read MoreMobile payments: financial players are in the driver’s seat
The momentum behind mobile payments is picking up but many of the newest challengers in the space are going to have to get over one nagging reality: consumers still trust their banks and credit card companies to drive the mobile payments market.…
Read MorePayPal: Mobile payments and location-based offers go hand-in-hand
PayPal isn't just building out a point-of-sale transaction network. It's looking to engage consumers well before they set foot in a store. The company says its WHERE location-based ad network will be key in helping merchants attract consumers into their stores with deals and offers.…
Read MoreWhat’s up with Google and biomass power?
Out of all of Google's close to $1 billion in clean power projects, turning biomass into energy seems like the least relevant technology to Google's core business. But Google has made a few small investments into biomass projects, including a hog waste to energy project.…
Read MoreThe long road for mobile payments
American Express has worked up an infographic charting the rise of mobile payments, highlighting a lot of the milestones over time. All this work in the past is now coming together to make mobile payments a mainstream technology.…
Read MoreEBay adds invoice payments to PayPal with BillSafe acquisition
EBay is continuing its buying spree, snapping up Germany's BillSafe, a payment-by-invoice provider. The new acquisition will be rolled up into PayPal, which made a minority investment in BillSafe last year and collaborated on a joint online invoice payment solution for e-commerce customers.…
Read MoreForget wallets. What else is NFC good for?
NFC has been trashed by critics, who say it adds no value to consumers or is a technology in search of a need. But increasingly, we're seeing more interesting projects and applications being built that show how NFC will be deployed outside of mobile payment situations.…
Read MoreMeet Giftly: A gift card company with actual tech cred
Gift cards are big business: The industry as a whole brings in $100 billion annually. But gift card companies are not exactly known for being on the cutting edge of technology. But San Francisco-based startup Giftly is bringing serious innovation to how gift cards work.…
Read More