Visa Inc. moved on Thursday to commercialize mobile payments using cloud-based near-field communication technology with its release of Visa Cloud Payment Solutions. A related development, the announcement of the upcoming debut of a tokenization service, is aimed at locking down cloud-based NFC and other digital payments. The new services include …

Without fanfare, Amazon.com Inc. last week introduced a trial version of its first digital wallet. The free Android app, known as Amazon Wallet, has been available since July 17 on Amazon’s own App Store and on Google Play. It is also available pre-installed on Amazon’s recently unveiled smart phone, the …

Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. both made moves in the electronic-payments space this week, but analysts question whether the giant social networks are preparing frontal assaults on the payments industry. Menlo Park, Calif.-based Facebook on Thursday revealed that it is testing a “Buy” button that will let members buy products directly …

The PCI Security Standards Council has placed Trustwave Holdings Inc.’s business of assessing payment-processing software for compliance with a major security standard “in remediation,” an official term that means probation. Chicago-based Trustwave is one of the biggest firms, if not the biggest, in the business of assessing merchants and processors …

  Bluetooth low energy beacons will play a key role in a mobile payment and loyalty service being developed by SK Planet Inc. and DoubleBeam Inc. that promises easier mobile payments and offer redemption. The beacons connect Bluetooth low energy-compatible smart phones with DoubleBeam’s GoPago tablet-based point-of-sale system. Now in …

It’s July, and what with the summer doldrums having set in, we thought it might be timely to review a few principles we’ve learned over the years about digital transactions. Some of you may well disagree with any number of these, and if you do, I hope you’ll email me …

Kevin Woodward Securing mobile payments involves taming a many-headed beast of suppliers, developers, and manufacturers. Imagine creating a mobile-payment service using the latest and most advanced security features, and then realizing that with one download a consumer could sidestep all of that and incur a mobile-payment headache. It’s a very …

The startup that popularized a cloud-based approach to mobile payments using near-field communication (NFC) on Monday opened to card issuers and mobile-application providers a developer platform that could make it cheaper and easier to include digital cards in mobile apps. The platform, from Austin, Texas-based SimplyTapp Inc., offers tools specific …

  Payment card data remains a top target for criminals, but personally identifiable information, such as birth dates and addresses, is growing in favor among them, finds the 2014 edition of the Trustwave Global Security Report. Based on an analysis of 691 data-breach investigations conducted in 2013 by Chicago-based security-services …

Our Guide spotlights how mobile payments and digital currency drive payments innovation. by John Stewart, Jim Daly, and Kevin Woodward Alternative payment schemes are becoming almost too numerous to count. A few months back, one payments-industry veteran listed all the mobile wallets he knew of and came up with about …