payments

Start-up Square is looking to offer consumers and retailers its own unique mobile payments system through revamped versions of its iPhone/iPad app and its Android app.

Set up as a potential alternative to the much-touted but still emerging near-field communication (NFC) technology, Square's system would still let you pay for goods and services using your mobile phone without the need for cash or a credit card. But instead of having you tap your phone against an NFC-enabled register or terminal, Square's system would let "check into" a store through your phone, pick up your items, … Read more

The mobile and banking industries have been all abuzz lately about offering consumers the ability to pay for items through their cell phones. But how do consumers actually feel about this?

Survey results released yesterday by MasterCard tried to gauge how comfortable people would be using their cell phones to pay for items on the go at stores, restaurants, and other retail outlets. And like many surveys focused on new technologies, this one showed a fairly big gap in feelings between the young and the not-as-young.

Among those 18 to 34 years old, 63 percent said they would be at … Read more

Apple's next iPhone will not be getting a near field communications (NFC) chip, according to a new report from analyst group Bernstein Research.

That report, picked up by Bloomberg and care of Business Insider, comes more than a year after signs surfaced that Apple was exploring the use of NFC chips in its mobile devices. Reports since then have been conflicting, with some saying the feature would arrive in the next device, and others pushing it out to the version after that.

NFC allows data transfer between two devices at short distances (about 4 inches). For phones and other … Read more

Visa is planning to launch a new type of digital wallet system that would let consumers pay for items online with just a single click.

Tapping into the growing mobile payments technology known as NFC (near-field communications), Visa's offering could also let consumers wirelessly pay for items at retail outlets through a mobile device equipped with the digital wallet technology.

The company is promising a number of benefits through its digital wallet. Consumers could order items online in one click using a single e-mail address or ID and password instead of having to plug in their mailing addresses and … Read more

Intuit wants to give its customers a glimpse of the future of mobile payments through an adaptation of its GoPayment service that eliminates the need for credit cards.

Tapping into the growing field of NFC (near-field communication) technology, Intuit's reimagined GoPayment service would let consumers wirelessly pay for items on the go through just a touch of an NFC-enabled cell phone.

With the necessary NFC hardware and credit card information stored on a mobile phone, consumers could leave their money and credit cards at home and use their phones to buy items and services at stores, restaurants, and other … Read more

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile USA are scaling back plans for a mobile payment system that will allow people to buy things with their cell phones, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal today.

In November the companies announced that they had formed an alliance with credit card company Discover to build their own mobile payment network. The joint venture was known as Isis. The plan called for the carriers to set up their own payment and transaction network that would charge fees based on transactions. The business model would have put the wireless operators in … Read more

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's new company, Square, gives iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners the capability to accept credit card payments and charges a small percentage of each transaction only. No monthly or annual fees. No hardware expenses. And now, you can get a Square reader at an Apple Store or from Apple's Web site.

This is obviously a huge step for the start-up that has been offering a mobile payment solution for independent contractors and small businesses for almost a year now via its Web site.

Square's device is a small card reader plugs into the … Read more

Two weeks after launching an all-new digital-payments platform called Serve, American Express is doubling its efforts in the emerging space with an investment in Payfone, a mobile-payments provider.

Payfone has raised $19 million in a third round of funding. In addition to American Express, Verizon Investments and Rogers Communications are also participating, along with existing investors Opus Capital, BlackBerry Partners Fund, and RRE Ventures.

As part of the investment, American Express will integrate Payfone's mobile-payments service into Serve.

Serve is American Express' new digital-payments initiative, which lets consumers make purchases, take cash withdrawals from ATMs, and make person-to-person payments … Read more

A group of security researchers say they have found ways to trick online cashier systems into ordering items for free or at a discount.

Researchers from Indiana University and Microsoft Research found security holes in a software development kit from payment hosting provider Amazon Payments, Rui Wang, a Ph.D. student at Indiana University, told CNET in a recent interview. Amazon fixed the problems after being notified by the researchers, and integration bugs found in merchant shopping-cart applications and implementations on several retail sites have also been fixed.

The software they examined contained "logic flaws that can be exploited … Read more