Payments

BARCELONA, Spain--You would think Michael Abbott, who runs a joint venture aimed at deploying mobile-payment services across the nation, would want to take a shot at Google and the early stumbles it's had with its rival digital wallet.

You'd be wrong.

"I applaud Google for addressing the problem quickly," Abbott said in an interview with CNET today. "It's best for the industry if we move on."

Isis, a joint venture backed by AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile USA, has taken a slow, methodical, and some would argue frustrating, path toward deploying … Read more

Links from Monday's episode of Loaded:

BARCELONA, Spain--Isis, a mobile-payments joint venture among three of the major wireless carriers, is taking the slow and steady approach to its mobile wallet. And it appears to be working.

The venture, formed from an alliance between Verizon Wireless, AT&T, and T-Mobile USA, said today that BarclayCard, Capital One, and Chase will place their debit and credit cards into the Isis mobile wallet. The agreement marks a further strengthening of the circle of partners for Isis.

While Google has shot out with its Google Wallet service, Isis has taken a more methodical approach in its digital wallet, lining … Read more

Mobile phone customers around the world may soon have a way to pay any merchant or any other person with their device.

Today, San Francisco-based Boku unveiled Boku Accounts, a white-label service that will allow wireless carriers to offer their customers a mobile payments system that could work throughout the world. Those mobile users, in turn, will be able to make payments at any credit card terminal either with their phones, or with a special debit card.

Though no carriers have yet formally adopted the new service, Boku says one U.K. operator is well into trials. The company, which … Read more

Google has patched a hole in Google Wallet that could've allowed someone to access a user's funds simply by resetting the PIN and using a prepaid card.

The company said yesterday it has issued a fix that now prevents a prepaid card from being re-provisioned to another person. It has also restored the ability to issue new prepaid cards following a move on Monday to disable the use of such cards.

Osama Bedier, vice president of Google Wallet and Payments, said that he wasn't aware of any actual incidents of people abusing the prepaid cards or Wallet … Read more

Most companies would be happy with 1,000 percent growth in one 12-month period. At the online payments company WePay, they're shooting for back-to-back years like that.

Late this evening, WePay released a set of statistics showing that it had a very good 2011. Among the most notable figures was that the Palo Alto, Calif., company hit the 1,000 percent growth mark in revenue, users, and total payment volume.

And according to co-founder and COO Rich Aberman, WePay believes it can hit those same milestones in 2012.

That the company feels so bullish should come as no surprise. … Read more

Voters chat with Obama on Google+ Hangouts, Apple surpasses Hewlett-Packard in PC shipments (if you count iPads, that is), and almost everyone would take your call while on the toilet.

Links from Tuesday's episode of Loaded:

T-Mobile is getting into the mobile payments business with the help of Square.

The carrier announced today that its small-business customers will be able to get the Square credit card reader at select T-Mobile stores. When the reader is connected to a supported smartphone, the device allows business owners to swipe customer cards and have the money from the transactions automatically deposited into their bank accounts the next business day.

T-Mobile has become the first carrier to offer the increasingly popular mobile payment reader, but unfortunately for the carrier's customers, Square's technology will only be available in a handful of stores … Read more

If you follow any of my coverage, then you know I have a healthy interest in mobile payments.

When people think mobile payments, they think about the act of paying for goods by waving a smartphone at the cash register. But I'm more interested in the implications that come from the capability. You're seeing it now with the introduction of Google Wallet, which wants to use payment history to better serve discounts and advertisements. It's what comes next that is so exciting.

But as we're seeing with Google Wallet, as well as other attempts to bring … Read more