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  PayPal (Sort of) Embraces NFC …   With rivals like Google Inc., Visa Inc., and Master­Card Inc. having jumped into near-field communication technology, there has been no little speculation in the payments business about when, or whether, PayPal Inc. would take the plunge.   Wonder no more. The eBay …

  The Concentrated World of ISOs   Reps from more than 1,200 independent sales organizations pound Main Streets, malls, and strip shopping centers in search of merchants interested in payment-processing services. That number suggests a wide-open industry, but a new study of ISOs sheds light on just how few players …

  By Karen Epper Hoffman   Next year may be the year of NFC. Then again, it may not be. In the meantime, a slew of startups have some alternatives to think about. Ever hear of Starbucks?       Near-field communication technology (NFC) may have taken a few strides …

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  Startups and established companies alike are betting that consumers obsessed with daily deals could jump-start mobile payments. But it may take a while for that bet to pay off.   By Jane Adler       Rewards redemption with a mobile device at the point of sale isn’t a …

  Rebounding after abandoning plans to build a proprietary merchant network, the Isis mobile-payments joint venture of three leading telecommunications companies on Tuesday said it had enlisted the support of the four major general-purpose card networks in the U.S. The announcement marks an advance by the venture backed by AT&T, …

  Keeping a Wary Eye on the Networks   Forget about Google and PayPal. Merchant acquirers are more worried about competitive threats from their long-time spouses by forced marriage, the payment card networks.   That intelligence comes from an Aite Group LLC survey of 20 industry executives, including 17 chief …

  Peter Lucas   Keeping up with change in electronic payments is hard, but essential, work for community banks. Here’s how they’re doing it.   Every time a huge bank—Bank of America Corp., JP Morgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co., for example—makes a splash in payments, as …

  Linda Punch   A product of its acquired Revolution Money program, Serve is American Express Co.’s entrant into the increasingly competitive mobile, online, and person-to-person payments market. Will it deliver?   When an industry heavyweight like American Express Co. throws its hat into the digital-payments ring, people sit up …