Mobile Commerce

The torrent of press releases promoting this new mobile-banking technology or that new mobile-banking service usually references, either implicitly or explicitly, the consumer as the end user. But small businesses represent a far more receptive user group for mobile-banking services, including bill payments, according to a new report from Boston-based …

Financial institutions have made big strides in fighting identity fraud over the past year but still lag in preventing the crime by using such technologies as mobile alerts, according to a report released this week by Javelin Strategy & Research. “Despite so many consumers having mobile devices, banks are still …

As mobile banking spreads to more banks, the companies that enable the service are getting ready to bring it to the merchant point of sale, along with a bevy of incentives to induce consumers to buy. The move, say some, stems from the recognition that if banks simply enroll online-banking …

MasterCard Inc. on Thursday announced a service it sees as a major step toward the ultimate commericialization of contactless payments via mobile phones. Intended primarily for the North American and European markets, the MasterCard Over-the-Air Provisioning Service is aimed at allowing any member issuer to readily personalize a handset for …

So-called stickers, or chip-and-antenna inlays that can be affixed to mobile phones or other tokens to turn them into contactless-payment devices, are showing signs of developing from a novelty to a commercial product. CPI Card Group, a card manufacturer in Littleton, Colo., expects to ship “several million” bank-card-branded payment stickers …

A person-to-person payment pilot based on mobile phones, launched on Tuesday by Citigroup Inc. and Obopay Inc., will become a commercial service in the U.S. next year if goals concerning user counts and transaction volumes are met, says a Citi executive. The pilot, which follows a trial the two companies …

Results from a pilot in San Francisco involving multiple accounts on cell phones equipped with specialized contactless-payment capability show that consumers will readily adopt such technology as a form of wallet and as a way of accessing marketing content, says an executive with the processor involved in the pilot. In …

Visa Inc. on Thursday said it will introduce transaction alerts and other services that will work with Google Inc.'s new Android operating system for mobile phones. The world's largest payments network also said it has developed contactless-payment and money-transfer applications for a new handset from Nokia that features near-field communication …

A new study by Javelin Strategy and Research has a bit of good news about last-minute, or expedited, bill payments and about another hot topic, mobile payments. Some 45% of the consumer group Javelin calls “mobile bankers” make an expedited payment at least once a month compared with only 30% …

A successfully completed test of specialized mobile technology developed jointly by a U.S.-based maker of contactless-payment readers and software and a German smart card manufacturer could bring closer the commercialization of mobile phones that make point-of-sale payments in the same way contactless cards do. The test, whose results were announced …