payment

SAN DIEGO--No single company can catapult mobile payments into mainstream use, said American Express executive Dan Schulman, who called for more partnerships between the financial and wireless worlds.

"All of us need to play together," Schulman said today during his keynote address at the CTIA Enterprise & Applications show. "All of us have strengths and capabilities we bring to the table."

Schulman himself straddles both worlds. He is the group president of American Express' enterprise growth unit, which is responsible for mobile payments. Prior to that, he ran Virgin Mobile USA and Sprint Nextel's prepaid, … Read more

The mobile-payments joint venture between three of the national wireless carriers has gotten the support of nearly all of the major handset manufacturers in its bid to enable consumers to make purchases by waving their phones.

Isis--which is made up of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile USA--said today that HTC, LG Electronics, Motorola Mobility, Research In Motion, Samsung Electronics, and Sony Ericsson will ship devices using the joint venture's technology standard for near-field communication, which enables the tap-and-go payment capability. The alliance, however, is missing a key player in Apple.

A spokesman for Isis said the venture … Read more

Google Wallet, which will allow people to tap or swipe their phones to pay for things, officially launches today on its first smartphone, the Samsung Nexus S offered on Sprint Nextel.

While several other companies, including credit card giants Visa and American Express, as well as mobile wireless carriers, have also announced plans to launch their own digital wallets, Google is the first to take its digital wallet to market.

Citibank, MasterCard, and Sprint are the initial launch partners for the service. What this means for users is that, initially, virtually the only credit cards that will work with Google Wallet are Citibank MasterCards. Google is also offering a Google Prepaid MasterCard as well, a workaround for people who may not have a Citibank MasterCard. People who want to use this card can preload money from other credit cards onto the Google prepaid card. And then they can make purchases using the phone.

Sprint is the first official carrier partner since it is the carrier offering the Nexus S 4G. But as other Android smartphones equipped with NFC (near-field communications) technology come on the market, other devices on other carriers will eventually be able to use the service too.

Google also said today that it has licensed NFC technology from other major credit card companies: American Express, Visa, and Discover. This means that upcoming versions of Google Wallet will support those credit cards as well.

"In the future, our goal is to make it possible for you to add all of your payment cards to Google Wallet, so you can say goodbye to even the biggest traditional wallets," said Osama Bedier, vice president of payments at Google.… Read more

NEW YORK--It's been a long time coming, but the mobile-payment revolution may finally be here.

MasterCard, one of the major credit card issuers eyeing the market for years, is set to launch its service in the U.S. with partner Google. The company is the exclusive credit card issuer for the launch of Google Wallet, a digital-wallet application for Google Android phones.

Google Wallet lets people store credit card information, gift cards, and loyalty cards in a digital format on their phones. And using short range wireless technology known as near field communications, or NFC, it allows people to … Read more

PayPal is rolling out a new payments platform for online and local merchants that it says will give customers an improved shopping and buying experience.

The platform will include location-based offers, and will be accessible from any device (not just mobile phones), PayPal President Scott Thompson announced in a blog post today.

"PayPal is reimagining money and making it work better for merchants and consumers--whatever device you're on, wherever you are in the world, and however you prefer to pay (whether that's cash, credit, or installments)," Thompson wrote.

The eBay-owned pioneer of peer-to-peer payments gave merchants including Home Depot and Sports Authority a sneak peek at its new offerings today in Los Angeles, but it hasn't yet offered the public too many details beyond words like "seamless" and "flexibility." The PayPal graphic above does offer some hints as to what the platform will offer, though, including bar code scanning and real-time inventory availability.

We also know, thanks to AllThingsD's one-on-one briefings with PayPal execs, that merchants won't need to adopt new infrastructure or purchase new terminals to opt in to the system. Neither, apparently, will customers need to upgrade their phones. … Read more

Nokia is jumping even further onto the NFC bandwagon with plans to support the mobile payments technology in its latest Symbian phones and all future phones.

The Finish phone maker's current C7 handset and its new 700, 701, and 600 phones already include the NFC hardware and will fully support it by the first half of 2012, according to NFC World and other sources.

The company also plans to outfit all upcoming Symbian phones with the NFC chips as part of its aggressive move into the mobile payments market.

"From now on, all of our products will have … Read more

The cast of Buzz Out Loud has a message for HP that we hope they'll hear: guys. Seriously. Please stop talking. Don't tell the press you may or may not spin off your PC unit if you can figure out what that would mean for the company, and don't let the EVP of the PC business say HP might get back into tablets. I mean, how hard is that, really? Plus, Wikileaks springs a major leak, and Beyonce's baby pwns Twitter.

AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T- Mobile USA plan to invest an additional $100 million into their mobile payment joint venture, Isis, to help get the project off the ground more quickly, Bloomberg reported Monday.

According to Bloomberg's unnamed sources familiar with the joint venture, the investment is contingent on whether Isis, which was developed to turn cell phones into payment devices, could sign up additional banks and merchants.

A spokesman for Isis declined to comment on the rumors.

The joint venture, formed in November, has been somewhat slow to get off the ground. But the additional funding … Read more

Verizon is now selling Intuit's GoPayment credit card reader for free at its retail stores.

Thanks to a new partnership between Verizon Wireless and Intuit, business customers can get the mobile card reader for free after a $30 rebate and the activation of a GoPayment account. The card reader and its app can be found at all of Verizon's retail stores and as well as its business-to-business outlets.

Intuit's GoPayment system is geared toward small and midsize businesses that need to process credit cards on the go. The reader itself plugs into a smartphone or tablet. After customers swipe their credit or debit card through the reader, the payment is processed automatically and the funds sent to the merchant's bank account within a few days.… Read more