Payment card transaction-processing technology developer VeriFone Systems Inc. is betting that consumers might want to play the lottery while they’re semi-idle gassing up their cars or moving around town in a taxicab. The leading point-of-sale terminal maker said on Wednesday that it would test sales of state lottery tickets by …

The Home Depot Inc. on Tuesday started rolling out a point-of-sale payment system that will let customers pay with their PayPal accounts at all of the home-improvement retailer’s almost 2,000 U.S. stores. The rollout comes just seven weeks after the two companies unveiled a five-store pilot in the San Francisco …

In a move that could indicate a thaw in the long cold war between banks and wireless carriers in the mobile-payments business, the carrier-controlled Isis venture on Monday announced a trio of major banks are the first to sign on as issuers on its platform. Indeed, with the Isis wallet …

The Isis mobile wallet, set for release in two U.S. cities this summer, will feature a prepaid card with cash already loaded and a capability to “follow” participating merchants to receive coupons and other offers. The broad outlines of how the wallet will work were disclosed on Wednesday as Isis …

After bottoming out in 2010, identity fraud rose nearly 13% last year, according to new findings from Javelin Strategy & Research. Javelin’s findings also associate two hallmarks of the tech-oriented early 21st Century, social networks and smart phones, with a higher risk of identity fraud. Pleasanton, Calif.-based Javelin surveyed 5,022 …

Mocapay Inc., one of the earliest startups in the mobile-payments space, finally is poised to go national with new partners, a different pricing model, and a broadened set of technological options that its president says makes payments by smart phone easier for merchants and consumers. Mocapay launched in 2006 and …

Google Inc. late on Tuesday announced a solution for a security flaw in its mobile wallet that allows hackers to gain access to wallet owners’ prepaid accounts. Google also said it had, on Monday afternoon, restored the ability to load funds on new prepaid cards. In response to the flaw, …

A longstanding truism in the acquiring business is that smaller merchants tend to generate more profit than their larger counterparts. But now research has emerged to show that smaller online merchants are even more profitable for acquirers and processors than brick-and-mortar stores of the same size. In fact, across all …

All eyes in the payments business these days are on mobile, especially on the potential smart phones have to change the way people shop for stuff and then pay for it in physical stores. So when talk turns to mobile payments in this context, it usually refers to a technology …

Virtual Currencies: Bust-Out Ahead? Witness the recent travails of the euro if you want proof of how hard it is for any new currency, even a physical currency backed by multiple governments, to attain and retain widespread usage and acceptance. The obstacles blocking the new breed of electronic currencies from …