Cover Story Going for a Checkmate VeriFone’s buyout of Hypercom will further its dominance of America’s POS terminal industry, which is in the throes of rapid change. Is there life beyond the box? BY JIM DALY It’s not your father’s point-of-sale business any more. It’s not even your older brother’s. …

In the largest U.S. chainwide expansion yet seen in mobile payments, Starbucks Coffee Co. announced on Wednesday it is extending its proprietary, prepaid mobile payments pilot to all of its U.S. company-owned stores. The move brings the chain’s Starbucks Card Mobile App to almost 6,800 stores and increases the number …

While the news in smart phones this week has been all about Verizon Wireless’s announcement that it will start marketing the iPhone next month, the news that may well be of more importance to mobile payments and mobile banking is the hot streak that Google Inc.’s Android operating system is …

Transactors ‘We’re Betting on the Gesture of Tapping’John Stewart By building bridges between the online and offline worlds, Bling Nation hopes to popularize ‘tapping in’ at merchants. It’s all about going viral, says one of the mobile-payments startup’s top executives. Scarcely two years old, Bling Nation Ltd. has already deployed …

Trends & Tactics PayPal Eyes Payments from Couch Potatoes Might PayPal Inc.’s next advertising theme be, “As Seen on TV”?Having recently struck deals that will bring it to the physical point of sale, the payments unit of eBay Inc. is working with a Texas television-technology specialist to handle anticipated growing …

Google Inc. continues to cement its early grip on mobile payments, as indicated by the disclosure on Monday that the online search giant has acquired a small company in Toronto whose technology purports to enable payments, promotions, and advertising over mobile phones. News of the deal follows in the wake …

As with other recent moves toward contactless payments via mobile phones, Google Inc.’s introduction of a smart phone equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology comes shrouded with question marks, say mobile-payments players. Google’s move, which it announced on Monday in conjunction with the rollout of a new, NFC-supporting version of …

Already big inside the convenience stores at thousands of gas stations, point-of-sale terminal maker VeriFone Systems Inc. is making headway at gas pumps. VeriFone on Thursday reported that petroleum-industry revenues grew 58% in its fourth fiscal 2010 quarter ended Oct. 31 over the year-earlier period. The strong petroleum results helped …

Most of the chatter about who will win or lose when the Federal Reserve Board releases its debit card interchange regulations and related rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial-reform law centers on card issuers, payment networks, and merchants. But technology vendors are likely to be affected too. One company that …

Secure Vault Payments (SVP), a method of e-commerce payment that relies on the automated clearing house, secured its first big-bank supporter on Wednesday with the announcement that U.S. Bank has agreed to offer the service to both consumer and merchant clients. The fifth largest bank in the country, the Minneapolis-based …