Mobile Commerce

The hype still abounds, but mobile payments and banking seem to be taking some concrete steps this week toward wider adoption. –Mitek Systems Inc., the leading developer of software for mobile remote deposit capture, on Monday announced that five of the nation’s 10 largest retail banks now use its flagship …

The telecommunications companies that own the Isis mobile-payments joint venture have apparently given up on the idea of creating their own merchant network and instead are redirecting their efforts on a mobile wallet, according to a published report. If confirmed, the Isis move means that the existing payment card networks …

Intuit Inc. on Monday dropped flat transaction fees for its GoPayment mobile-payments service just over two months after Square Inc. did the same thing, an indication that a price war could be breaking out between two of the major companies competing for brand-new and small businesses that use smart phones …

When eBay Inc. released its fourth-quarter results back in January, the company’s top executives spent some time during their conference call with analysts discussing the potential effect of the Durbin Amendment on PayPal Inc., eBay’s e-commerce transaction processor. Durbin and its restrictions on debit card pricing and transaction routing remain …

Square Inc. has been the mobile-payments darling of Silicon Valley because of its association with social-network superstar Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter. On Wednesday, however, the San Francisco-based startup gained the ultimate stamp of approval from the payments establishment when it disclosed that Visa Inc., the world’s largest payment …

Could a little-noted provision in the Durbin Amendment strangle the nascent U.S. contactless-payments market in its crib? It’s a very real possibility, says a pair of researchers, and the consequences could deal a blow to the prospects for mobile payments that depend on a promising technology called near-field communication (NFC). …

Tyfone Inc. this week launched what appears to be the first solution from a third-party vendor that allows any consumer with a mobile device to enroll in, and then use, mobile banking directly from a handset. The new product, which also features integration with Tyfone’s near-field communication (NFC) platform for …

Think Computer Corp., the startup behind the FaceCash mobile-payments system, has launched a browser-based point-of-sale register in an effort ease FaceCash integration for merchants. “The register lets any small business turn a Web browser into a cash register,” says Aaron Greenspan, Think’s chief executive and president. The product, which has …

Displaying its newfound mobile-payments fervor for the second time in just over a fortnight, American Express Co. on Wednesday announced it was investing in a startup called Payfone Inc. and would integrate Payfone’s technology with its new Serve mobile-pay platform. Founded in 2008, New York City-based Payfone uses a consumer’s …

Secure Vault Payments will announce a mobile application next month for the U.S. market, a top executive with the online-payments service tells Digital Transactions News. The mobile application, which will work on Apple, Android, and BlackBerry smart-phone systems, will start with a pilot in the fall and be in commercial …