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A little more than 90 days into its pilot, Isis, a mobile-payments consortium formed by wireless carriers Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, and T-Mobile USA, announced on Tuesday at the 2013 Payment Summit in Salt Lake City that it has more than 10,000 merchant locations in Salt Lake and Austin, …
Read More »Survey: Despite All the Digital Wallet Buzz, Few Consumers Understand Or Use One
Digital wallet? Try explaining that concept to your grandmother. New research from comScore Inc. says that very few consumers understand what a digital wallet is and even fewer have used one, the notable exception being PayPal Inc. The November study by the Internet data-measurement firm found that only 51% …
Read More »Eye on M-Commerce: Amazon Coins a Digital Currency; Google Cites New ‘Forms of Payment’
Amazon.com Inc. on Tuesday said it will jump into the digital-currency market with Amazon Coins, a payment product it will roll out in May on for its popular tablet, the Kindle Fire. Users of the device will be able to redeem the new currency on the Amazon Appstore, which …
Read More »Entering the Faster P2P Fray, Co-Op Launches Sprig, a Wallet App for Credit Unions
The effort to bring near-real-time person-to-person payments to the customers of smaller financial institutions took another step on Wednesday with the announcement the Sprig digital-wallet service from Co-Op Financial Services, a processor and network operator that links some 3,000 credit unions. The new service, available for both mobile devices …
Read More »By Launching a Branded Cash-Funding Product, PayPal Turns up Heat on Banks
PayPal Inc. on Thursday took a step closer to providing bank-like account access with its introduction of a branded prepaid card that can be used to fund PayPal accounts. The PayPal My Cash Card, which is the first PayPal-branded prepaid card in the 14-year-old company’s history, allows consumers who lack …
Read More »Square Steps in to a Small But Thriving Digital Gift Card Niche
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 …
Read More »Isis Uses ISOs, Subsidized Terminals To Build Merchant Base for Its NFC Wallet
As it rolls out its service in Austin, Texas, and Salt Lake City, the Isis mobile-payments venture is teaming up with independent sales organizations and merchant processors to sign up merchants to accept its mobile wallet. One of those ISOs, Phoenix-based MobiSquad, currently has about 350 merchants in the launch …
Read More »By Taking a Pass on NFC, Apple Punches a Hole in a Key NFC Forecast
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. …
Read More »As Visa Launches its V.me Wallet, It Wins Uptake Among Small Banks And Credit Unions
As it turns out, digital wallets aren’t just a creature of the big banks. With Visa Inc.’s announcement on Tuesday that it has made its V.me digital wallet commercially available, the world’s largest payments network said some 53 financial institutions have signed on to offer the product to customers. Among …
Read More »Starbucks Debuts ‘Square Lite’ in 7,000 Stores, But More Features Are Coming
Three months after announcing their partnership, mobile-payments provider Square Inc. and coffee king Starbucks Corp. said Starbucks customers could now use the Square Wallet for purchases at 7,000 company-operated U.S. locations. The purchase process at Starbucks will be a bit different for users of the consumer-facing Square Wallet, formerly known …
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