Mobile Wallets

• In separate blog posts, PayPal Holdings Inc. executive vice president Bill Ready and chief executive Dan Schulman reported the company has reached 200 million total consumer, merchant, and charity accounts. They also said the PayPal’s One Touch authentication technology has signed up 50 million consumers and more than 5 million merchant accounts, …

Mastercard Inc. and Oracle Corp. announced Monday a collaboration that could dramatically expand the reach of Mastercard’s Masterpass digital-wallet technology, as well as the network’s tokenization capability. Masterpass will be embedded into Oracle’s POS systems for retail and hospitality merchants. The companies said Oracle will embed Masterpass in systems it …

• Rambus Inc. introduced its Rambus Unified Payment Platform, which it says will enable mobile-wallet users to pay with credit, points, and coupons in a single transaction. • Payments provider Harbortouch Payments LLC announced a partnership with Strategic Funding Source, a merchant cash-advance provider. • Square Inc. will pay $54.8 million to Starbucks Corp. to cancel …

By Rick Oglesby @DTPaymentNews PayPal Holdings Inc. has always been an enigma. It’s not really a payment network, not really an independent sales organization or merchant acquirer, not really a wallet or a prepaid card issuer, not really a person-to-person payments solution, and not really a payment gateway. Yet, it …

Gulf Oil L.P. becomes the latest fuel retailer to offer its own mobile-payment app with the introduction Tuesday of Gulf Pay. The service, scheduled to be tested at some New England and New York locations in the first half of 2017, eventually will accept Mastercard Inc.’s Masterpass digital wallet. Further …

By Jim Daly@DTPaymentNews As retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Kohl’s Corp. ramp up their mobile wallets, the tech companies that offer general-purpose SimplyTapp Inc. developed the original HCE technology. Google, now the main subsidiary of Mountain View, Calif.-based Alphabet, included HCE in late 2013 in Android 4.4, also …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Not all private-label charge and prepaid card programs are equally successful, and so neither will be the proprietary mobile wallets recently launched by merchants. Factors that are likely to lead to a successful app include the strength of the retailer’s brand, its commitment to either convenience …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews How enthusiastic are consumers about shopping on their smart phones and tablets? Enough that mobile commerce grew to $22.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, up 45% from $15.6 billion in the same period a year prior, says comScore Inc., a Reston, Va.-based data-measurement firm. That …

By John Stewart @DTPaymentNews Security jitters have hit the payments industry, and it’s no wonder. The arrival of new and sophisticated ways to spoof identities, coupled with the rapid rise of mobile usage for banking and payments, has created a minefield for security professionals charged with guarding accounts and the …

By Kevin Woodward@DTPaymentNews Chase Pay, the nascent mobile-payments service from banking giant JPMorgan Chase & Co., has added two more merchants to its roster. HMSHost, a Bethesda, Md.-based dining-services company specializing in transportation locations, and Parkmobile LLC, an Atlanta-based parking company, will begin accepting order-ahead capability based on functionality developed …