With a little more marketing oomph behind it, the gift card market rebounded in 2014 after a down year in 2013, according to a report released Wednesday by Mercator Advisory Group. Virtual gift cards, a small but key segment of the market, held their own and may soon benefit from …

With $12 million in new funding, PayRange Inc. wants to place more of its Bluetooth-equipped dongles inside vending machines to enable more consumers to make contactless, and cashless, payments. The funding, announced Thursday by Portland, Ore.-based PayRange, will be used to expand its staff and increase the number of PayRange-equipped …

The MyCheck mobile app is gaining some ground in a crowded field of applications that enable consumers to order and pay restaurant tabs. New York City-based MyCheck LLC announced Thursday that the 68-location Twin Peaks restaurant chain will offer its iOS and Android white-label app to customers for payments and …

Left for dead as recently as two years ago, the concept of mobile payments in physical stores is staging a remarkable resurrection. The signs are everywhere. In April, PayPal Inc. said it will adopt near-field communication (NFC) after years of mocking the technology, which enables wave-and-pay transactions with smart phones, …

Merchant processor Square Inc. is about to introduce a card reader that supports Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile-payment service, Apple announced Monday. Apple Pay also will support retailers’ loyalty programs, according to Jennifer Bailey, Apple Inc.’s vice president of Internet services. The announcements came at the start of Apple’s Worldwide …

By John Stewart Wednesday’s announcement by MasterCard Inc. that its MasterPass digital-payments service has signed up home-furnishings and décor e-retailer Wayfair, along with several Wayfair properties and mobile apps, threw into relief the progress the two giant general-purpose card networks are making in e-commerce and in-app payments. Once the province …

Two dominant payments companies—Visa Inc. and VeriFone Systems Inc.—are teaming up to better secure the varying ways consumers shop across digital and face-to-face channels. Announced Wednesday, the deal lets San Jose, Calif.-based VeriFone, which makes point-of-sale hardware and security products, gain access to Visa’s CyberSource platform that global merchants use …

With its Visa Digital Enablement Program, announced last week on the same day Google Inc. unveiled Android Pay, Visa Inc. has introduced application programming interfaces for card-issuing institutions to link to potentially thousands of digital-payments services with a single integration and without separate business agreements for each. Visa also hopes …

By John Stewart Left for dead as recently as two years ago, the concept of mobile payments in physical stores is staging a remarkable resurrection. The signs are everywhere. In April, PayPal Inc. said it will adopt near-field communication (NFC) after years of mocking the technology, which enables wave-and-pay transactions …

  It’s no secret that one cool use of smart phones and tablet computers is the ability to use apps. Research firm eMarketer Inc. predicts that 93% of U.S. smart-phone users will download and install at least one app in 2015, and 90% of tablet users will, too. It’s also …