By the end of 2015, most smart phones sold in the United States will have near-field communication (NFC) capability and be mobile-wallet ready, potentially creating a confluence of payments and commerce, says Matt de Ganon, senior vice president of product at mobile wallet provider Softcard. That prospect excites de …

In its latest move toward becoming a force in electronic payments, social network Twitter Inc. reported Monday that it is starting a test allowing members to make purchases via tweets from 28 partners that include merchants, rock bands and non-profits. “For a small percentage of U.S. users (that will grow …

  Online retail giant Amazon.com Inc. is moving into brick-and-mortar stores with the debut Wednesday of its Local Register mobile point-of-sale service. Similar to other mobile POS services, such as Square Inc.’s, Local Register requires merchants to create an account, purchase a card reader and download an app to a …

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 …

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 …

Technology continues to drive change in the way riders on America’s mass-transit systems pay fares. While a few agencies have cast their lot with contactless card systems that also accept general-purpose debit and credit cards with contactless chips, other systems are turning to smart phones as add-ons to existing fare …

Near-field communication for payments has floundered for years. Now, host card emulation promises to revive it by cutting out the mobile carrier. By John Stewart If zoologists studied payments critters, they would be astounded at the gestation period of near-field communication. Here is a powerful technology that has languished in …

The merchant cash-advance and non-bank small-business loan sectors have boomed in recent years, with startups, established providers, and PayPal Inc. all seeking to tap merchant demand for capital that banks haven’t met. Now comes merchant processor Square Inc. with a new merchant cash-advance (MCA) service called Square Capital. As it …

The mobile-payments variant known as host card emulation captured its biggest financial-institution backer yet with a deal between Russia’s Sberbank and Sequent Software Inc. Sberbank will launch a commercial service “later this year” using HCE software from Mountain View, Calif.-based Sequent, an official with the bank tells Digital Transactions News. …

Sequent Software Inc. on Tuesday launched a solution that will let card issuers take advantage of so-called host card emulation, a protocol that allows issuers to provision digital cards for mobile payments while bypassing the phone-based secure element. With the new solution, issuers will also be able to embed their …