Mobile Commerce

Mobile telephone numbers are evolving into much more than communication endpoints. They’re rapidly becoming verification tools, especially for online financial services, according to newly released research. The findings come from MobileSphere LLC, a Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of mobile-communication services, including Slynumber, which provides customers with an app-based, globally useful U.S. …

American Water, said to be the largest regulated water and wastewater utility in the U.S., has adopted VXconnect from software developer VertexOne. VXconnect offers a mobile app by which customers can manage payments. Toast announced it has signed Kung Fu Tea for point-of-sale payments processing and related technology. Kung Fu Tea operates 330 …

In an ideal world, a report about the low costs of personally identifiable data that can be stitched together to create a synthetic identity, a proverbial Frankenstein, would be nonexistent. That’s not the world today, however. A new report from Coveron, an identity-theft protection service, outlines how cheap it is …

Payments processor Talus launched ReadyPoint, an offering that allows merchants to accept payments on mobile phones through softPOS tap-to-pay technology from Ingenico. A new report from Visa Inc., called “The Great Indoors: How the ‘Couch Economy’ Is Redefining Consumer Spending Habits,” found that more than 17% of payment cards are used for streaming …

Sole proprietors on the Cash App platform may have a way to accept payments from consumers who also have Cash App accounts. Cash App, a part of Block Inc., says a test of Cash App-funded payments to a sole proprietor with a Cash App account is under way now. It …

As spending enabled by stablecoins picks up momentum, payments players are beginning to see a need to guard against agentic transaction fraud involving cryptocurrency as the medium of exchange. The latest example of this unfolding concern emerged Thursday. Contending that “blockchain analytics was built for a pre-agentic world,” London-based risk-management …

MoneyGram launched its MoneyGram Card, a Visa-branded card backed by stablecoins and developed in partnership with Rain, a provider of stablecoin services. The card is available now in Colombia, with plans to launch in other markets over coming months. Flex Dental Solutions said its FlexPayments service will offer buy now, pay later …