Mobile Commerce

While many brick-and-mortar retailers were disappointed with sales for the 2012 holiday season, online merchants posted respectable gains in the mid-teens, according to new reports. Internet usage tracker comScore Inc. reported on Thursday that e-commerce volume hit $42.3 billion in the November-December holiday shopping season, up 13.8% over $37.2 billion …

As we prepare to close out 2012, we thought we’d look back at the year’s major developments and pinpoint the ones that generated our biggest news stories. Here’s our list, arranged chronologically. Not surprisingly, given the events of the year in electronic payments, the list is dominated by mobile-payments and …

Mobile payments are the all the rage in the banking, retailing, and software industries, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is cautioning banks to keep a short leash on their mobile-payments vendors. The FDIC also warned in a recent report that banks’ role in mobile payments could be reduced as …

Leading U.S.-based point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc.’s retreat from its role as merchant acquirer for its Sail mobile-payments platform for micro-merchants last week after only seven months is triggering intense debate among independent sales organizations and payments-industry veterans. The crux of the debate concerns whether processing for tiny merchants …

Seven months after VeriFone Systems Inc. launched Sail, its mobile-payments platform for micro-merchants, the San Jose-based point-of-sale terminal maker and payments software provider is stepping back from its role as an acquirer for Sail merchants and will instead revert to its traditional role of solutions provider. The announcement from chief …

Retail purchases online will reach $318 billion this year, up a healthy 13% from 2011, with mobile transactions accounting for more than 6% of that volume, according to a new report from Javelin Strategy & Research. This year marks the first time mobile-originated transactions have accounted for a meaningful share …

Square Inc.’s announcement over the weekend that it is making digital gift cards available for its base of mostly small merchants heralded the San Francisco startup’s entry into what is turning into a hot market, particularly with the onset of the holiday-shopping season. Square, which in recent months revamped its …

When Apple Inc. this fall launched its latest smart phone, the iPhone 5, without a near-field communication (NFC) chipset, the move was widely seen as a blow to the prospects for NFC as a technology for mobile payments. Now comes a report estimating just how damaging that blow could be. …

Mitek Systems Inc., the leading developer of software for mobile remote deposit capture, announced on Wednesday that U.S. Bank will offer its new Mobile Photo Bill Pay product to its customers in 2013. The news is a breakthrough for Mitek in taking its key mobile-imaging technology beyond its original deposit …

If the start of the holiday-shopping season this year has demonstrated anything, it is the new prominence of mobile in the mix of payments. But for all the talk among online merchants about mobile payments, not all will benefit equally from the trend, according to Bill Ready, chief executive of …