In a move that could bring mobile payments based on near-field communication (NFC) to a wide array of financial institutions, MasterCard Inc. on Thursday announced it will provide its PayPass contactless-payment technology to mFoundry Inc., a Larkspur, Calif.-based vendor of mobile-banking software. MasterCard also invested an undisclosed sum in mFoundry, …

  By Debbie Smart   Banks have struggled with finding ways to offer mobile services to business owners profitably. But if offered the right mix of payment services, small businesses will pay for value.       According to Forrester Research, since 2007, the use of mobile banking applications has …

  Open-fare payments for public transportation got a big boost when the Chicago Transit Authority announced it had awarded a $454 million, 12-year contract to Cubic Transportation Systems to build and maintain a payment system that accepts contactless cards. The CTA, which provides about 500 million rides a year, thus …

Vantiv Inc. filed a registration statement on Thursday for a proposed initial public offering of common stock that, if successful, would have a business started by Fifth Third Bancorp join the thin ranks of publicly traded processors that get most of their revenues from merchant acquiring. Vantiv, formerly known as …

  In the wake of strong growth in its mobile-payments business, PayPal Inc. on Tuesday made available an upgraded Android app that includes a widget for person-to-person payments using near-field communication (NFC) technology. The launch represents the San Jose, Calif.-based e-commerce processor’s first live product based on NFC, a short-range …

  What with the Durbin Amendment taking effect and serious moves in mobile payments, many observers had the feeling that the pace of change in e-payments quickened in 2011. But along with faster change come more problems. Herewith some of the most salient.   By Jim Daly and John Stewart …

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  Already the subject of new debit card regulations, the payments industry is coming in for more scrutiny from the federal government. A Federal Trade Commission official told attendees at a merchant-acquiring conference on Thursday that the government has formed a task force to monitor third-party payment-services providers. The feds’ …

Shadows darken the recent economic news, but early third-quarter reports from payments-industry companies paint a much sunnier picture. The big card-issuer and merchant processor Total System Services Inc., for instance, on Tuesday said it was increasing its dividend by 43%, its first dividend increase in five years. Last week, Visa …

  Many community bankers say their payment revenues are declining, and they are bracing for hits from higher expenses from complying with regulations and from fraud while at the same time trying to ramp up new services such as mobile payments. The findings come from the Independent Community Bankers of …