Marketing

Boulder, Colo.-based Combined Payments Inc.'s FastLane, a new network that converts driver's licenses into loyalty and payment cards, Thursday announced that it had secured its first advertiser as part of a point-of-sale program that will share revenues with participating merchants. The $2 million deal involves the La Jolla, Calif., office …

Electronic point-of-sale transactions secured by biometric scans may get a boost now that Pay By Touch Inc. has switched on processing service in 204 Jewel-Osco stores in the Chicago area as well as in the rest of Illionois, and in Indiana, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The San Francisco company's latest implementation …

Boston-based Vayusa Inc., whose MobileLime network serves some 80 merchants for payments initiated from consumers' cell phones, plans to begin supporting transactions based on the near-field-communication (NFC) standard in the second quarter. Announcing its new NFC platform today, the company says consumers with MobileLime accounts will be able to use …

December was an ominous month for banks, retailers, processors, and other service providers concerned about the safety of the Internet commerce channel. Although the reported number of phishing incidents declined in the last month of last year, that drop masked alarming increases in the number of malicious Web sites launching …

Four months after introducing a marketing system that communicates with customers' mobile phones, Broadway Marketplace has had such positive sales results its top executive says the Cambridge, Mass.-based supermarket will add an electronic payment function within the next two months. The store, which last September began using a service called …

American Express Co. has announced the seventh financial institution to agree to issue AmEx cards since the New York-based travel-and-entertainment giant began courting banks for its network two years ago. GE Consumer Finance, a Stamford, Conn.-based unit of General Electric Co., said it will issue cards on AmEx's network that …

A tiny startup in Redmond, Wash., has signed up about 500 users for its week-old person-to-person payment service based on mobile phones and expects to launch a commercial service in 2006. With a head count of three, including two former Microsoft Corp. employees, TextPayMe Inc. allows individuals with cell phones …

Some 59% of adults, or an estimated 131 million people?either bought or received a gift card over the year from August 2004 to August 2005, a study released today reveals. In part, this has meant that the electronic stored value cards are gaining popularity as gifts for a more diverse …

Separate reports released this week show that the market for mobile content?everything from games to ring tones to video clips and beyond?may have farther to go than previously supposed by those who see the market as a nascent source of micropayments. Also, other research reveals content marketers may have to …

Reporting rapid growth for its payment service and rising interest in a new marketing and finance platform it rolled out last month, I4 Commerce Inc. says it will begin next year expanding into new payment channels, with debit and stored-value ranking as distinct possibilities. The company will end the year …