payments

Stimulate this: Buy American-made audio with your tax rebate check

The Federal Economic Stimulus program checks are in the mail. When you get yours try and be a good consumer and spend it right away. That'll help our economy and remember the checks will do the most good if they're spent on made in America products. One of my favorite high-value, high-end audio brands, Outlaw Audio, would be a good place to start. Its multi-channel home theater power amplifiers are in fact proudly made in the USA. Outlaw sells direct on its website and all of their amps are now on sale--with free FedEx Ground shipping! If you'… Read more

Using the phone to pay for bus rides

As part of a public experiment, some commuters in Singapore need only tap their mobile phones for bus and train fares.

They're part of the Near-Field Communication (NFC) phone trial jointly organized by Singapore service provider StarHub and partner EZ-Link. According to the press release, the trial is the first public NFC trial in the Republic and possibly one of the largest of its kind in the world.

Since the middle of last week, 1,000 selected trialists have been given a handset from Singapore phone manufacturer iWOW and a Sony PaSoRi card reader (EZ-Link card reader) which they … Read more

Look out, PayPal: Amazon has a new payment service

The days of PayPal's dominance over casual payments online are changing rapidly. A little over a year ago, Google unveiled its Checkout service, which has become an increasingly popular way to purchase items from various online retailers using a single account. Today, Amazon.com is unveiling its own payment program that lets Amazon.com users purchase items or services using their Amazon.com account credentials and billing information.

The new program is called "Flexible Payment Service", or FPS, and is launching with an invite-only API for developers who want to integrate the new payment service. What does … Read more

Verizon Wireless adds mobile payment with Obopay

Verizon Wireless said Wednesday that it has struck a deal with payment company Obopay to allow its wireless subscribers to use their cell phones to send money to each other.

The Obopay application lets users transfer money from an Obopay account to anyone with a cell phone number on any wireless network. The only catch is that those receiving the transfer also have to be registered with Obopay.

The application will be available on Verizon's Get It Now service, which means it will only work with devices that can access the Get It Now catalog.

Using cell phones to … Read more

Office 2.0: Open for Business

This group of presenters at Under the Radar is focused on tools that let regular people (read: not coders) create Web sites and tools to make things easy for site visitors and customers.

My Payment Network provides small-businesses and education payment systems aimed at cutting administrative costs and the hassle of paper checks. For schools, it's a chance to add an online payment system for things like sports enrollment fees, and equipment costs. For small businesses, it's another way to handle payment processing. My Payment Network is comparable to PayPal, but offers customizable controls for those in charge … Read more

Helio collaborates with Obopay

Helio, that virtual carrier that doesn't call itself a phone company, has partnered with Obopay, a new mobile peer-to-peer payment system. With Obopay on your Helio device, you can get, send, and spend money directly from your cell phone via a prepaid account. You can also get an Obopay Prepaid MasterCard account that can be managed on your Helio phone. With Obopay in Helio's stable from the get-go, Helio is furthering its standing in the young-and-hip demographic. It'll be interesting to see how popular Obopay gets in such a niche market.