Radio Frequency Technology

U.S. Bancorp reported this week that it would start testing Visa Contactless credit cards by the end of the month in the Denver area. The test will involve an undisclosed number of cardholders who would be able to use the cards equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips at about 600 …

A mobile payments and banking service backed by Cingular Wireless and CheckFree Corp., announced this week, could pave the way to faster and more widespread adoption of contactless payments, its backers say. The service, which is being tested by an unnamed regional bank and is expected to launch in the …

MasterCard Worldwide and point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Holdings Inc. on Wednesday announced that the 1,600 taxicabs in Philadelphia now accept or will accept MasterCard's PayPass contactless card by year's end. The cabs will use technology from VeriFone Transportation Systems, a joint venture of VeriFone and Queens, N.Y.-based taxi-equipment manufacturer TaxiTronic …

MasterCard Worldwide announced on Thursday the start of a contactless-payment pilot in Dallas using mobile phones enabled by near-field communication (NFC) technology. The pilot, which is expected to involve about 500 subscribers of 7-Eleven Inc.'s Speak Out Wireless service, is the second real-world test of NFC payment in the U.S. …

Seeking to distinguish itself in a growing crowd of mobile-payment processors, Obopay Inc. saw its application go live this week on Amp'd Mobile Inc., a wireless network aimed at the youth market. This development follows by one week an agreement the Redwood City, Calif.-based startup struck with ViVOtech Inc. that …

Consumers spend up to $1.5 trillion a year using on small purchases using cash, depending on who's estimating, but converting so-called micropayments into electronics will be one of the payment card industry's tougher challenges. Experts contacted by this newsletter's sister publication Digital Transactions magazine for an upcoming story on micropayments …

Consumers who participated in a recently ended test in Atlanta of contactless payment on mobile phones may have warmed to the technology (Digital Transactions News, Sept. 8), but banks, transaction processors, independent sales organizations, and other players looking to cash in could now face a formidable hurdle: the wireless phone …

A nine-month trial of contactless payments using near-field communication (NFC) technology in Atlanta ended this week with what its participants are calling positive results, including an apparently enthusiastic reception from the pilot's 150 users. Meanwhile, the results of the Atlanta pilot may be spurring banks, the bank card networks, handset …

Contactless payments loom large among rising challenges now confronting even the most dominant processors in the U.S. merchant-acquiring business, according to a new study. The report estimates that acquirers processed 45.5 billion credit, prepaid, and signature-debit transactions in 2005, a huge electronic transactions market it says is controlled by five …

Visa USA reported Thursday an increasing willingness among consumers to use cards for purchases valued at under $25, a highly coveted transaction segment in which the San Francisco-based bank card network waives its signature requirement in some 17 merchant categories. The network says its payment volume in this segment jumped …