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The battle over online gambling continued earlier this week during a hearing held by the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee on legislation to tax licensed Internet gambling in the U.S. The bill—known as the Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act—was reintroduced in March by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. …
Read More »Heavyweight Entrants Help Trigger a Merger in Card-Acceptance Apps
The principals of a leading software developer and its independent sales organization partner in the card-processing application market for Apple Inc.’s iPhone have bought a key rival, a move they say will enable them to thrive in a fast-changing market that is attracting heavyweight competitors. Inner Fence LLC and Dublin, …
Read More »An iPhone Accessory Heats up the Push for NFC on Memory Cards
With the announcement on Monday by DeviceFidelity Inc. that it has developed a case for Apple Inc.’s iPhone that will let the popular smart phone accept a memory card, the payments industry took what some observers consider a key step toward the commercialization of near-field communication (NFC), the interactive technology …
Read More »PINless Debit, Card Acceptance for Consumers from Obopay
Online PINless debit transactions could get a boost if a package of four new mobile-payments services from Obopay Inc. proves to be a hit. Dubbed Mobile Money for Banks, Obopay’s new white-label service has another interesting twist besides PINless debit in that it will enable consumers to accept payment cards. …
Read More »Square Founders Get Rock Star Welcome But Give Few Details
The founders of the much-hyped Square Inc. payments system may have wowed a full-house crowd of bankers on Monday, but they added little to public understanding of how their product will actually work and how it will stack up competitively with similar offerings for mobile merchants. While polite and talkative …
Read More »Ebay Chief Touts PayPal Innovation As Processor Logs Strong Results
Online auctioneer eBay Inc. on Wednesday said its PayPal Inc. unit has generated more than $30 million in payments so far on the open platform it introduced in November. Thousands of developers have now written applications using application programming interfaces PayPal has introduced for the platform, eBay officials said, allowing …
Read More »Mobile Capture’s Profile Rises As Smart Phone Adoption Climbs
Remote deposit capture by means of smart phones, a technology that seemed futuristic only a year ago, is rapidly taking root, but questions remain about smart-phone adoption, security, and the type of financial institution for which it makes sense. Two recent studies, one of which was released this week, document …
Read More »Just Days After Its Debut, Square Changes Its Processing Fees
Square Inc., the new payment system from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, has adjusted its merchant pricing less than three weeks after its debut. Merchants will pay more on card-present transactions under $100 and less on bigger sales compared with the original plan. Card-not-present transactions, however, will cost more until a …
Read More »As 2-D Barcodes Gain Steam for M-Payments, a Novel Twist Emerges
The use of two-dimensional bar-code technology for mobile payments appears to be picking up momentum. On the heels of a major expansion of the technology, announced last week by Starbucks Coffee Co. and Target Corp., a startup company this week announced it is launching a so-called private beta for a …
Read More »In Bypassing iPhone for iPad, Square Shows Its Hand?Or Some of It
The mysterious Square Inc. payment service made a name for itself Monday by joining a somewhat exclusive club of companies to offer the first applications for Apple Inc.'s iPad notepad computer within a couple of days of the iPad's much-hyped April 3 debut. Square also revealed its pricing. San Francisco-based …
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