Mobile Commerce

An application officially announced this week extends to virtually any cell phone the capability of accepting credit cards, a function that up to now mobile merchants have found mostly restricted to so-called smart phones like the iPhone or BlackBerry. The wCharge Credit Card Terminal, quietly introduced early this year by …

If mobile-payments services are finding a niche anywhere right now, it appears to be in the market for digital goods like games and social-network applications. Palo Alto, Calf.-based Zong Inc., which began operations last year, announced this week that the processing platform it shares with its parent company, Echovox Inc., …

For years, more consumers have used biller sites rather than online-banking sites to pay their bills electronically. But now, with financial institutions struggling to build deposits, bank sites have edged ahead, according to research released on Wednesday by Javelin Strategy & Research. At the same time, though, it appears some …

Mitek Systems Inc., whose software allows users to create check images with their camera phones and then use the handsets to send the images to banks for deposit, signed its biggest processor to date this week for the six-month-old technology. Milwaukee-based Fiserv Inc. agreed to adopt Mitek's Mobile Deposit product …

Banks face a new threat in electronic payments, according to a report just out from Javelin Strategy and Research: the ability of telecommunications companies to take the driver's seat in mobile person-to-person payments. This risk comes to the fore as the number of so-called smart phones explodes and consumers show …

The concept of using so-called smart phones as mobile credit card terminals started getting headlines less than a year ago, and the experience of one independent sales organization that has developed software applications for the mobile devices shows just how rapidly handsets like iPhones and BlackBerrys are taking root in …

While experts debate when mobile commerce will hit its stride, Apple Inc. announced on Tuesday that its App Store, which it set up just one year ago, has downloaded more than 1.5 billion applications for the company's hugely popular iPhone handset. The App Store had just hit the 1 billion …

As the momentum behind mobile payments gathers strength, some technology experts are starting to consider so-called smart phones?which make mobile payments easy?to be devices in need of encryption. That's one finding in an annual study out Monday about encryption, a hot topic in the payment card industry nowadays because of …

Despite tests and innumerable press releases, the number of payment transactions from cell phones barely registers. But payments from mobile devices are about to take off thanks to a convergence of factors on the demand and supply side, according to a new report from Yankee Group Research Inc. The “Dialing …

Bling Nation Ltd., which late last year unveiled a private-label payment network intended for local transactions (Digital Transactions News, Nov. 19, 2008), this week announced it has signed up its first financial institution and has been processing transactions for it in Colorado. The State Bank, La Junta, went live on …