Google Inc. on Thursday officially entered what is rapidly becoming a highly competitive sweepstakes for dominance in the nascent business of mobile wallets. The Web search giant announced it is working with four partner companies and some 16 retailers to offer consumers a payments-and-rewards system based on its Nexus S …

  Google Inc.’s announcement concerning its plans for mobile payments and promotions, expected on Thursday, will herald a major effort by the Web search giant and partner companies to commercialize near-field communication (NFC) technology, sources tell Digital Transactions News. “This is not just another [NFC] pilot,” says a source close …

The bubbling person-to-person payments market boiled over Wednesday when mega banks Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and Wells Fargo & Co. announced a joint P2P service dubbed clearXchange. While currently limited to the banks’ customers, clearXchange could be integrated with other P2P systems, and possibly even become …

With the traditional lines between e-commerce and the point of sale blurring, a Boston-based startup on Tuesday introduced a mobile wallet that lets consumers shop at multiple stores, both brick-and-mortar and online, and skip past checkout lines. AisleBuyer LLC’s app, which works on iPhones and handsets running Google Inc.’s Android …

  PayPal Inc. is dropping any pretense of not pursuing point-of-sale payments directly. The eBay Inc. subsidiary now promises that it has new services coming for paying at physical locations using smart phones. Third-party software developers for several years have been designing various apps that have blurred the line between …

Cash: the merchant’s friend or foe? Two of the nation’s largest merchants on Thursday expressed surprisingly favorable views about the ancient payment method while an executive with the Chicago Transit Authority, the nation’s second-largest public-transportation system, wished it would go away as soon as possible. The comments came during the …

  The world’s airlines are seeing less fraud these days in their online bookings, thanks to more experience with Web-based ticket sales and wider usage of fraud-fighting tools, according to a study released on Wednesday. Overall, online fraud for air carriers dropped 31%, from $1.7 billion to $1.4 billion, between …

  With bank opposition to the Durbin Amendment growing, the National Retail Federation on Wednesday launched what it calls a major, 60-day advocacy campaign to “preserve swipe-fee reform” for debit cards. The multipronged effort, according to an NRF news release, includes an “intensive grass-roots” campaign to mobilize retailers through NRF …

  After taking a nasty hit in the recession, credit cards are back on their feet, though somewhat wobbly. Figures from First Data Corp., the largest U.S merchant processor, show that credit card usage is sustaining growth after returning to positive territory in early 2010. Data from the bank card …

Like them or not, the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial debit card regulations to implement the so-called Durbin Amendment will take effect, though possibly a little late, according to Capitol Hill observers speaking at the Electronic Transactions Association’s annual conference Wednesday. In the meantime, a proposed 12-cent cap on debit interchange …