Radio Frequency Technology

In an example of how fast news can spread in the over heated atmosphere of mobile payments, news items and blog postings appeared on Monday and Tuesday suggesting that Apple Inc. is angling to buy Vivotech Inc., a vendor of hardware and software for contactless payments. At the same time, …

A year-long conversion of the old fare-collection systems used by monthly-ticket customers of multiple transit agencies in San Diego County, Calif., to a unified system based on contactless cards is nearing completion, a local official tells Digital Transactions News. The new system, from San Diego-based Cubic Transportation Systems Inc., will …

First Data Corp., which for the past couple of years has been pushing its Go Tag contactless-sticker technology, announced on Tuesday it will promote a new contactless technology for mobile phones based on Secure Digital memory cards. But the massive Atlanta-based processor says the move will have no impact on …

Visa Inc.'s announcement this week that starting this summer it will no longer require signatures for transactions of $25 or less at most U.S. merchants heralds a policy that will result in faster and smoother transactions but could also undermine the payments industry's move toward contactless technology. “The merchant proposition …

USA Technologies Inc. and a dissident shareholder group buried the hatchet last week, but their settlement agreement sets some high hurdles for the provider of vending-machine card readers and remote networking transaction-processing services to clear. If not, the dissidents could reassert themselves?just as competition for processing payments from unattended locations …

The struggling U.S. contactless card market took another blow late last year when leading consumer-electronics retailer Best Buy Co. Inc. stopped accepting the Visa payWave contactless card, reportedly because it objected to paying Visa Inc.'s signature-debit interchange rates. Best Buy's action probably cost the retailer nothing in lost sales but …

A Discover Financial Services employee test of contactless payment stickers for mobile devices that started in April 2009 will continue, according to a Discover executive. But Discover is being coy about if and when it or its card-issuing partners will roll out Discover's Zip contactless brand on a wide scale. …

USA Technologies Inc., the provider of contactless card readers and wireless transaction-processing services for vending machines, laundries and other venues, has become the latest payments-industry tech company whose management finds itself embroiled in a fight with shareholders angry about losses and slumping stock prices. Malvern, Pa.-based USA Technologies sent a …

Impatience in the electronic-payments business with the snarled progress of near-field communication for mobile payments is prompting a number of technology providers to develop products that can facilitate transactions without relying on full-fledged NFC. Now Inside Contactless, a major supplier of chips for contactless cards, has entered this arena with …

While a raft of players over the past several months have introduced software that equips smart phones to accept cards, Ingenico has introduced a wireless point-of-sale device that combines in one unit the ability to take card payments, print receipts, and act as a personal digital assistant (PDA). The French …