Shopping app shopkick, now 4 million users strong, made some big waves when it first opened for business in 2010. With its combination of in-store hardware and user-friendly mobile app that pinged customers with deals when they walked into a participating merchant, it looked like one crucial part of the mobile commerce puzzle — actually getting people to use their phones to get deals on goods… → Read More
NFC-based mobile payments are getting another boost in the States: U.S. Bank, one of America’s largest, has announced that it will begin to trial a new mobile payments service called “U.S. Bank Go Mobile,” which allows iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S users to pay for purchases at point-of-sale by waving their smartphone. The initial tests will take place in Salt Lake City, Utah, and Portland, Oregon. → Read More
Groupon CEO Andrew Mason last year set his company a goal of adding more value and diversity to its bread and butter business in daily deals, and today it took one more step in that direction: Groupon Payments — its dongle-based Square/PayPal Here competitor — has now been added to its Merchants app for Android handsets. → Read More
Mobile payments platform Remitly (formerly BeamIt), which allows U.S. users to transfer money overseas, has raised an additional $2.6 million, bringing its total raise to date to $5.1 million. The new investment comes from Trilogy Equity Partnership, making this a strategic move from Remitly, as Trilogy is known for its mobile expertise, investing in mobile startups like the now Rapid7-owned… → Read More
More news in the European mobile payment dongle space this morning: Rocket Internet’s Payleven is expanding the availability of its Android app — previously only offered in Germany — to three more markets: the U.K., Italy and Poland, where the app can now be downloaded from Google’s Play Store. → Read More
SumUp, another Square-style mobile payment dongle that launched in Europe in August backed by more than $20 million from b-to-v Partners, Shortcut Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures and Klaus Hommels, is continuing its rapid rollout by expanding into three more markets to take its total business footprint in Europe to 10 markets. The three new markets SumUp is adding are Belgium, France and Portugal. → Read More
A reminder today that big companies often have trouble mirroring the efforts of companies disrupting their spaces: Payment industry giant VeriFone is killing its Square competitor Sail, which just launched in May, thanks to costs that didn’t make the “razor-thin margins” it was seeing from its small merchant customers worthwhile. VeriFone announced the closure of its dongle-based mobile… → Read More
The mobile payments space already has its fair share of players, but lately some new names have been making big waves (like LevelUp), finally taking on veterans like Starbucks. The coffee giant recently inked a huge partnership with Square, which will bring the payments processors to 7,000 coffee shops across the U.S. But a few of the people behind Starbucks’ successful payments system have today… → Read More
In the increasingly crowded mobile payment card-reader space, it’s not just technology that’s being cloned. In the scramble to build traction and outrun the pack, startups are borrowing each others’ business strategies too. The latest move comes from Berlin-based mobile payment startup SumUp, which has just announced a nationwide partnership with German taxi hailing mobile app, Taxi.de. → Read More
Competition in the nascent market for point-of-sale mobile payments gets a little more crowded today. Adyen, a Holland-based e-commerce specialist, is today launching Shuttle (pun intended). As the backend payments provider for companies like SoundCloud, Getty Images, Benetton, KLM, PopCap Games, Greenpeace, and Vodafone for the last six years and extending that to mobile for the past two, Adyen… → Read More
Isis, the carrier-led mobile payments venture backed by AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, is today announcing a partnership with USA Technologies, to introduce up to 7,500 NFC-enabled vending machines in Isis’ two test markets of Austin and Salt Lake City. The machines will allow for payment acceptance using USAT’s ePort hardware and ePort Connect service. That means consumers can soon purchase… → Read More
Editor’s Note: Vanessa Clark is the co-founder of Mobiflock, a mobile safety and security company offering parental control services for smartphones and tablets. She is involved in the mobile industry in Africa.
Zimbabwean Tawanda Kembo, 25, has been employed for more than two years but still doesn’t qualify for a credit card. This is the result of banking restrictions on issuing credit… → Read More
Back in July, Reuters reported that Apple was looking to acquire mobile security solutions company AuthenTec for around $356 million. Part of the company’s business involved providing embedded mobile security but that division is being sold off to NFC company Inside Secure for around $48 million. Still, it looks like there’s reason to believe this move suggests continued interest in NFC. → Read More
Flint, a small business-focused mobile payment app that does away with dongles and NFC and instead uses the camera on a phone to “scan” a card’s numbers, has come out of beta. The iOS 6/ iPhone 5-compatible app is now available to download in the U.S. App Store.
In development for the last 18 months, Flint first launched as an invite-only service in May 2012, at the same time that it announced… → Read More
The landgrab among Square-influenced mobile payment companies in Europe continues apace: in today’s development, SumUp — which launched in August with more than $20 million in backing from b-to-v Partners, Shortcut Ventures, Tengelmann Ventures and Klaus Hommels, the early Skype, Facebook and Xing investor — today is announcing that it is opening for business in Italy, Spain and The Netherlands… → Read More
As the digital wallet battle rages on here in the U.S., with Google Wallet, Amex’s Serve, MasterCard’s PayPass, Square, PayPal, carrier-backed Isis, and others all wrangling for a piece of the action, Visa’s digital wallet V.me is today exiting from beta, and announcing numbers related to its current traction. The company says that it has now signed up over 50 financial institutions to its… → Read More
Square has Starbucks and now Square-clone Payleven, which is backed by Germany’s Rocket Internet incubator/investor, has signed up Berlin taxi association — Taxiverband Berlin (TVB) — to trial its Chip and PIN payment dongle. Payleven also makes a smaller magnetic swipe dongle for taking mobile payments but taxi drivers have opted to kick the tyres of the Chip and PIN system. → Read More
iZettle, the European Square-a-like mobile payment dongle service that’s raised €42.6 million to-date, continues to bulk up its activity in Europe. Today it’s officially launching in the U.K. — having previously tested the water with a trial. iZettle has partnered exclusively with carrier EE for the formal service launch, which operates the U.K.’s first (and currently only) 4G mobile network. → Read More
Just in case you needed more proof that the leaked news revealing a forthcoming physical Google Wallet Card is indeed legit, you can just visit Google’s own Help section on its Google Wallet website to catch a reference to the yet-to-be announced addition. On the page entitled “Eligible Devices,” Google mentions that all Android devices with an operating system of Android 2.3.3 or higher are able… → Read More
Small business mobile payments startup Emu launched its flat-fee dongle-less m-payments service in the U.K. last month. Today the company has announced its opening up to accept card payments in 16 more countries in Europe. Emu had previously offered registrations to European merchants outside the U.K. but with international registrations growing by more than 65 percent per day it’s expanding. → Read More
Square has taken its first step outside of the U.S. for its mobile payment service: it is now live in Canada. The company said today that its mobile card reader/processor is now available nationwide, priced at the same rate as in its home market: 2.75% per swipe. In the U.S. there are now 2 million businesses using Square’s system, making a total of $8 billion in annualized payments. → Read More
Today iZettle, one of the several Square-like mobile payments companies in Europe, announced that it was expanding its Series B round of €25 million and adding American Express as its newest investor. iZettle and AmEx are not disclosing the value of the new investment. It is joining Greylock, Northzone, MasterCard, SEB Private Equity in the round, which was originally €25 million ($31.4… → Read More
Rumors of an impending ISIS launch have been swirling around for a while now, but the company has just finally put an end to all that speculation. In keeping with previously leaked documents, ISIS has confirmed that its carrier-led mobile payments system will indeed officially go live in Austin, TX, and Salt Lake City, UT on October 22. → Read More
Visa is gunning against MasterCard’s PayPass, PayPal, Square and others to become consumers’ default digital wallet for online and mobile payments, and today it’s announcing two pieces of news in that strategy: it is adding PNC as its first U.S. banking partner, and 1-800-FLOWERS as a key retailer, to its V.me digital wallet scheme.
The PNC deal will see V.me integrated into PNC’s existing… → Read More
At CTIA MobileCon’s third day keynote in San Diego, a panel of mobile commerce industry leaders discussed the state of mobile payments, the challenges it faces in terms of adoption and regulatory concerns, and where we might be headed next. The bottom line: it’s the wild west out there, and unlikely to gain any clarity any time soon. → Read More
Online and mobile digital cash network Dwolla is partnering with mobile banking and payments service provider mFoundry, the companies are announcing today at the BAI conference in Washington, D.C. This is Dwolla’s first publicly announced partnership with a financial service provider, and the deal opens its service up to mFoundry’s 800+ banks and credit unions using its cloud banking platform… → Read More
Square is gearing up to launch its first international services by the end of this year, but in the meantime, one of its many dongle-based mobile payment competitors is building up outside of the U.S. Today mPowa — who you may recall from “hand-gate” — announced that it has signed a white-label deal with First National Bank in South Africa to offer its payment device in the country. The exact… → Read More
Stripe announced today that it is expanding its service to Canada, marking its first launch outside of the U.S. and the first step in a larger strategy of broad international availability. The Canadian launch should make quite a splash, because the online payments space is dominated by long-established incumbents here like Moneris, and at least as primed for the kind of shake-up that Stripe has… → Read More
Square’s $200 million Series D and $3.25 billion valuation yesterday may have risen expectations massively for where mobile payments will ultimately go, but for now the vast majority of us are still pulling out our cash, cards and checks to buy things. A study from Deloitte, notes that today in the UK only 1% of mobile consumers have ever used a handset to pay for something in a retail location. → Read More
Apple decided to forgo NFC support with the release of the iPhone 5, but that hasn’t stopped payments companies from continuing to invest in the space. MasterCard released a software development kit for its mobile PayPass technology with support for the Android and Blackberry OS 7 platforms. The toolkit will allow mobile operators and third-party developers the ability to integrate support for… → Read More
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