Collaboration between banks, mobile carriers and utilities could pave the way for enhanced services, including money transfers, says Eyad Hasan. Is there an ongoing dispute between banks and mobile service providers? Absolutely not. Eyad Hasan is senior project manager at EastNets Holding Ltd., with U.S. offices in Los Angeles and …

Gideon Samid • Gideon@bitmint.com Membership organizations customarily leverage their “numbers” to extract deep discounts from merchants. Now, the emerging digital-payment reality offers the same opportunity for ad-hoc assemblies of buyers. Suppose you are in the market for an iPad mini, and you find it in your favorite online store, priced …

George Peabody From financial institutions to card networks to mobile carriers, a fixation on payments has dimmed the once-bright prospects for near-field communication technology. Wences Casares, founder of Bling Nation and Lemon.com, once said of near-field communication, “NFC is a great technology. But it was abducted by payments, and hasn’t …

  With the United States playing catch-up with Canada and much of Europe in deploying chip card technology, security firms are starting to respond to online operators’ fears that the arrival of chips at the point of sale will drive fraud to the Internet. One of the latest of these …

It’s only human nature to be captivated by the new, the emerging, the sensational. In the case of mobile payments, about which we have heard much in recent months, many payments watchers have fallen head over heels for technologies that are not only new, but, shall we say, “cool.” But …

Loyalty systems, rapidly adaptable mobile and e-commerce technology, and data-security applications are attracting lots of venture capital. Here’s a look into the minds of investors. Hint: They’re not too keen on NFC. Peter Lucas If you want to know what the next hot new company in the payments industry will …

Venture-capital and private-equity investors are on pace to meet or exceed the $753 million they infused into the payments industry in 2011, the most since the $1.4 billion they invested in payments in 2001. Through the first three quarters of 2012, venture-capital and private-equity investors pumped $711 million into startup …

In a move that will greatly expand its business in card-not-present transaction processing, merchant processor Vantiv Inc. announced on Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire Lowell, Mass.-based Litle & Co. for $361 million in cash. The transaction is expected to close later this year and will result in 11-year-old …

Obopay Inc., a pioneer in mobile payments whose profile fell as mobile wallets gained momentum, has put itself up for sale, according to sources familiar with the matter. Details about the sale remain sketchy, including possible valuations and the identity of bidders, but sources say the 7-year-old company and its …

Global Payments Inc. still expects it could spend about $120 million as a result of the data breach it reported in early March, but new information from the company gives a glimpse of just where that money is going. The big merchant processor, however, didn’t give any new details in …