The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) on Aug. 11 posted a net loss of $2 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2014, compared with a net loss of $740 million for the same period a year ago, increasing pressure on the beleaguered organization to find new sources of revenue.
MasterCard and First Data Corp. today announced a partnership to extend MasterCard’s inControl product for managing card spending to First Data’s customers in Asia Pacific, to enhance their growing use of payments cards for e-commerce purchases.
PayPal Inc.’s recent rebranding of its Bill Me Later service is part of an effort to bring credit more to the forefront of its business and continue its expansion into offline payments, according to the company.
Rumors of Twitter’s imminent entry into e-commerce got more fuel last week, when some users of the company’s Android app noticed a new “Payment & Shipping” option.
Capitalizing on its recent high-profile moves in the mobile banking space, Cachet Financial Solutions netted nearly $6 million in its Initial Public Offering last month.
Many mobile apps used for shopping don’t provide consumers with enough information before they download them to their smartphones, according to the FTC.
Blackhawk Network today announced a partnership with U.K.-based Barclays Bank PLC to launch an e-gifting feature for Barclays’ Pingit mobile banking service, enabling consumers to purchase an e-gift for themselves or someone else using their mobile devices.
American Express has begun testing host card emulation (HCE) technology for mobile NFC payments at POS terminals in Croatia.
As consumers and merchants embrace card-not-present (CNP) transactions, such as online and mobile payments, the industry is looking for ways to further secure these channels.
Square, the San Francisco-based mobile card reader provider, will be releasing a new card reader enabling merchants to use their mobile devices to accept payments from cards that are EMV-enabled.
U.S. merchant groups have banded together to call for open standards for tokenized payments, to be managed by an independent body.
Starbucks has racked up nearly 12 million active monthly users for its mobile app, which processes 6 million transactions a week—and the company is looking to build upon that success, according to CEO Howard Schultz.
Financial institutions can capitalize now on mobile payments opportunities until the market for mobile payments at the POS matures, according to a white paper by Fiserv Inc., a Brookfield, Wis.-based financial services technology provider.
First Data has announced it will acquire digital gift card provider Gyft Inc.
Blackhawk Network and Amazon today announced they are providing consumers with ways to spend and better manage their gift cards (from dozens of major retailers and restaurants) using the Amazon Wallet app.
Apple could finally be preparing to make its long-awaited debut in the mobile wallet sector.
Mobile payments provider LoopPay has secured funding from global payments firm Visa as it pioneers a technology that capitalises on the installed base of magnetic stripe-reader point-of-sale systems rather than NFC, which is the current favourite in mobile payment circles.
Italian financial infrastructure company SIA has inked a deal with mobile commerce provider Swish Payments to support mobile payments in Africa and Europe. The two firms claim the deal will help to bring more efficient forms of payment to both regions.
Standard Chartered has launched a mobile wallet in the Philippines through a partnership with Globe Telecom, in a deal that will tap into demand for mobile money in one of the world’s strongest remittances markets.
Analyst Rick Oglesby posits that what’s happening outside of payments will actually have a bigger impact than what’s happening inside payments. Crazy or on point? Read and decide.
The mobile wallet is having a transformative effect on people’s lives in developing countries, bringing safer, faster, easier financial services to the people who need it most
Amazon has launched a new mobile wallet app for managing and redeeming gift and loyalty cards.
Mobile photo sharing and messaging app Snapchat might be seeking to move into payments.
As Google Wallet continues to experiment, the latest evolution adds a new gift card management function and removes fees on debit card-based P2P money transfers made via the wallet.
The boundary between social media and commerce continues to blur, with a pair of announcements from two major tech companies accelerating the convergence of shopping and socializing online.
The battle for space at the online checkout counter continues as Visa Inc. unveils a new service to enable e-merchants to add a one-click purchase button to shopping Websites and apps.
Mobile NFC services continued to expand in 2013 but the big question is, will this be amplified or disrupted by the introduction of host-based card emulation (HCE) into mainstream operating systems?
eBay Inc.’s Braintree payments unit has unveiled a new software development kit (SDK), marking Braintree’s first major upgrade since being acquired by eBay in an $800 million deal last year.
Chinese postal network China Post will make a major investment toward building a mobile and online payment service.
Forty percent of mobile wallet users are using mobile as their primary form of payment—and mobile-specific offers and rewards could be the key to converting the remainder, a new report suggests.
Swedish mPOS provider iZettle has added €5 million (US$6.8 million) to its coffers, after the latest investment in the company’s Series C round of funding.
First Data is going all in to the booming gambling and casino industry with a suite of payment features to streamline the flow of money for U.S.-based online and offline gambling operations from casinos to racetracks, lotteries and poker.
Gift cards are popular with U.S. consumers, but there’s still room for growth, as many consumers are uninformed about or uncomfortable with mobile gift cards and e-codes, according to research by the Retail Gift Card Association (RGCA), a trade association of closed-loop gift card retailers.
i2c Inc. has opened a Singapore office to address the growing market for prepaid products and mobile financial services in the Asia Pacific region.
David Sear, the former chief executive of the Weve mobile network e-commerce joint venture, has been appointed as group chief commercial officer at Skrill Group.
Analyst firm Juniper Research reckons more people will be using mobile apps for banking than web-based options by 2019, as the 800 million people who used their phones for banking more than doubles to 1.75 billion in five years.
PayPal is slashing the time needed for businesses to receive PayPal funds in their bank accounts.
Isis, the NFC-based mobile payment initiative backed by AT&T Mobility, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, announced it will rebrand its mobile wallet to distance the company from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, a jihadist militant group that often goes by the acronym ISIS.
Calling it a transition year, U.K.-based Monitise announced today its full year revenue for 2014 will fall short of expected growth because of a change to its business model.
Banks are continuing to spend money on branches, but they are dramatically changing their role to become centres for sale-oriented advice rather than service-oriented transactions, driven by the rapid growth of digital banking.
