Near-Field Communication (NFC)

Major tech and payments companies are reportedly showing an interest in acquiring Softcard, the troubled mobile-payments joint venture owned by three of the nation’s biggest mobile operators. Google Inc. is in “exclusive” talks with the company and has offered at least $50 million for it, The Wall Street Journal reported …

The number of anticipated wearable devices that can be used as payment devices has increased by one with the debut of the Wirecard Smart Band from processor Wirecard AG. Munich, Germany-based Wirecard is using host card emulation, a variant of near-field communication, in its devices. With HCE, banks and other …

Remember host card emulation? You might have lost sight of this variant of mobile payments based on near-field communication amid the flood of publicity Apple Inc.’s SIM-based Apple Pay service generated this fall. But HCE never went away, and now Royal Bank of Canada is making a bid to put …

Bitcoin merchant-services provider BitPay Inc. has launched an app to enable one-tap Bitcoin payment at the point of sale. Dubbed Bitcoin Checkout, the app is available now for smart phones and tablets using Android. An iOS version is planned for Apple Inc. devices. The app, when loaded onto a smart phone …

By John Stewart Merchant Customer Exchange LLC (MCX) has launched its CurrentC mobile-payment service with “thousands” of consumers in “several American cities,” the program’s chief executive said on Wednesday. The “consumers,” employees of retailers that make up the Needham, Mass.-based MCX consortium, are part of a pilot for the fledgling …

  CPI Card Group is working with digital issuance and wallet platform provider Sequent Software Inc. on CPIMobile, a service to deliver secure digital credentials to near-field communication (NFC)-compatible smart phones. CPI announced Monday. NFC is a two-way protocol that enables mobile devices to share data in a secure environment. CPIMobile …

  While Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay mobile wallet has been grabbing the headlines, the telco-controlled Softcard mobile-payments service this week lined up another major fast-food chain. Consumers now can use their Softcard mobile wallets to pay for purchases at U.S. McDonald’s locations. Formerly known as Isis, Softcard is a smart …

By Jim Daly and Kevin Woodward Just hours after Merchant Customer Exchange LLC (MCX), the retailer-backed developer of the CurrentC mobile-payments service, posted a response to reports about some of its members dumping Apple Inc.’s rival Apple Pay service, the company notified customers that “unauthorized third parties” had obtained email …

When Apple Inc. officially launched its Apple Pay mobile-payments service on Monday, all eyes were on the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, the smart phones that carry the near-field communication (NFC) technology that makes Apple Pay work in stores. But now it turns out Apple has also embedded an …

By Jim Daly As a complex new technology-based service, Apple Inc.’s Apple Pay was certain to hit some speed bumps after it debuted Oct. 20. Sure enough, reports of glitches surfaced, such as about 1,000 double charges on Apple Pay transactions funded by Bank of America Corp. debit cards. But …