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 …

Plastic: High Growth, High Risk More than ever, plastic dominates the business of electronic payments in the United States, with two-thirds of all noncash transactions in 2012 occurring on a card, up substantially from 60% just three years earlier. That’s according to the Federal Reserve System’s triennial payments study, released …

For Retailers, An Unsettling Settlement Retailers and their trade groups opposed to a $5.7 billion settlement of a class-action antitrust case challenging credit card interchange are not going gentle into that good night now that U.S. District Judge John Gleeson has approved the controversial deal. Defendants in the 8-year-old litigation, …

By Kevin Woodward With the invasion of smart phones and tablets, the iconic payment terminal—and the entire point of sale—is getting a new look. Are the traditional terminal’s days numbered? Perhaps no other device serves as an icon of the payments industry like the point-of-sale terminal. Sitting on a merchant’s …

ABnote is adding support for near-field communication (NFC) technology to its miWallet mobile wallet with the addition of the Wave device from Israeli technology vendor On Track Innovations Ltd., ABnote recently announced. The device connects to mobile devices using the audio jack on smart phones and tablets. When connected, it …

  Consumers with compatible smart phones now can load the Isis mobile wallet onto their devices and pay with a tap anywhere contactless payments are accepted in the United States. Isis is a payment scheme backed by wireless carriers AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA. The smart-phone wallet, which …

For two years, Google Inc. and Verizon Wireless have been at odds, with Verizon blocking the online search giant’s access to SIM cards on Verizon devices for Google Wallet. But on Thursday Google released a new version of its Android mobile operating system that not only slices through that Gordian …

Peter Lucas The sluggish progress of near-field communication in payments has TSMs looking to extend their services to cloud-based wallets and beyond. Consider the plight of the trusted service manager. Its fate is closely tied to mobile payments that use a form of short-range, interactive radio-wave exchange called near-field communication …

  Google Inc. released a trio of announcements on Wednesday concerning its Google Wallet mobile-payments application, but even taken together these did not add up to the major overhaul of the product that Google promised last fall. Google’s news included: a Wallet-based person-to-person payments service that works with Gmail, Google’s …