Google Inc. on Thursday officially entered what is rapidly becoming a highly competitive sweepstakes for dominance in the nascent business of mobile wallets. The Web search giant announced it is working with four partner companies and some 16 retailers to offer consumers a payments-and-rewards system based on its Nexus S …

  Why Prepaid Cards Need Marketing TLC Regulation, public ignorance about prepaid cards, and negative publicity worry prepaid card executives, according to a recent survey. Researchers from Boston-based Aite Group LLC polled 24 senior executives during March’s Prepaid Expo USA conference in Orlando, Fla., and asked them to rate their …

Local demographics and the availability of a mass-transit system that uses contactless technology for fare payment chiefly accounted for the decision by Isis, the joint venture formed late last year and led by major wireless carriers, to launch its first pilot next year in Salt Lake City, Utah,  Isis’s head …

Mobile payments may be a nascent business fraught with uncertainty, but Starbucks Coffee Co. seems to have found a key to success. Last week, the company revealed that more than 3 million transactions have taken place on its smart-phone-based prepaid payments system, which became available in all U.S. company-owned stores …

Banking processor Fiserv Inc. announced a trio of acquisitions in a 24-hour period that included picking up Atlanta-based mobile-banking technology provider Mobile Commerce Ltd., known as M-Com.  Brookfield, Wis.-based Fiserv also announced it is acquiring Maverick Network Solutions Inc., a Wilmington, Del.-based prepaid card processor, and Credit Union On-Line Inc., …

M-Commerce What NFC Should Look Like Steve Mott By most accounts, the wireless-carrier-based near-field communication (NFC) mobile payments initiative known as Isis (formally announced late last year but rumored for months before) is still falling short of the mark with respect to a winning formula for prying payments away from …

In a move the payments industry had expected since early August, the nation’s largest wireless carriers on Tuesday announced they had formed a joint venture to run a point-of-sale mobile-payments network. The new company, known as Isis, will be headed by Michael Abbott, formerly an executive with GE Capital’s proprietary …

In the biggest expansion yet of mobile payments to its standalone stores, Starbucks Coffee Co. on Monday said it has equipped almost 300 company-owned stores in New York City and parts of Long Island to accept transactions using 2-D bar code technology. This expansion follows the Seattle-based coffee chain’s move …

In a move that could generate significant incremental sales on its Android Market, Google Inc. is reportedly in talks with eBay Inc. about using PayPal as a payment method for applications that run on its hugely popular Android operating system for smart phones. But the talks aren’t likely to open …

The carrier-led mobile-payments consortium, news of which became publicly available on Monday, may break new ground in bringing payments based on near-field communication (NFC) to market. But it could confront major issues in attracting merchants, especially the big chain retailers looking to chop transaction costs, says one expert observer who …