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 …

  Consumers carrying around the next-generation Samsung Galaxy S5 smart phone will be able to use PayPal with a tap on the device’s biometric sensor. The smart phone, scheduled for release in April, will have a fingerprint sensor that enables consumers to use their online PayPal accounts to pay for …

A wireless connectivity standard known as Bluetooth Low Energy appears to be getting a high-energy reception in payments and commerce. Apple Inc. is among the first to put the technology to use in its stores. On-the-spot rewards company Shopkick is testing it in two Macy’s stores, one in New York …

A new smart-phone app hopes to give retailers an edge in capturing sales when consumers use their mobile devices in their stores. Dubbed SelfPay, the app enables consumers to pay for merchandise while standing in a store aisle and leave without stopping at a cash register. Developed by Digital Retail …

The Isis smart-phone-based payments machine is finally getting in gear, observers say, in the wake of several recent developments involving the service that is jointly owned by three big mobile-telecommunications carriers. Giant card issuer JPMorgan Chase & Co. on Monday said that several of its cards will support the Isis …

Mobile dominates this year’s Guide, as you’d expect, but so does the urge toward faster payments. Neither trend is going away any time soon. The obvious theme running through alternative payments nowadays is the predominance of mobile. Processors, solutions vendors, and startups alike are scrambling to make it possible to …

Jim Daly Apple has rolled out its Passbook mobile app for storing and redeeming electronic coupons, boarding passes, and other digital content. Can full-blown payments be far behind? No company is the subject of more speculation than the notoriously secretive Apple Inc. Lately, frenzied tongues have been wagging about what …

George Peabody From financial institutions to card networks to mobile carriers, a fixation on payments has dimmed the once-bright prospects for near-field communication technology. Wences Casares, founder of Bling Nation and Lemon.com, once said of near-field communication, “NFC is a great technology. But it was abducted by payments, and hasn’t …

PayPal Inc. announced on Thursday it will process payments when owners of electric vehicles charge up their cars at charging stations maintained by GE Industrial Solutions, a unit of General Electric Co. In what amounts to yet another venture into the physical point of sale for PayPal, the e-commerce processing …

When PayPal Inc. announced last month that it plans soon to process transactions for people as they watch TV, it looked like just the latest foray by the c-commerce processor into yet another new market. After all, the San Jose, Calif.-based eBay Inc. unit has been pretty aggressive lately about …