Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard’s head of emerging payments, sat down with Austin Carr of Fast Company to discuss the future of credit cards. “We’re rapidly moving to a world beyond plastic,” said McLaughlin. “In many ways, plastic is just convenient packaging.” The future of on-the-go payments may lie in the hands of near-field communication but unfortunately, adoption and availability have been extremely slow and limited. While NFC technology has been featured in a number of An...

Office Depot, the second-largest retailer of office supplies in the U.S., is testing PayPal’s new point-of-sale system in a limited number of locations according to Reuters. “It’s at this point in a small number of stores … because there are still some rough spots in that experience,” said Kevin Peters, president of Office Depot’s North American unit. “There are some limitations on who can use it, service carriers that support that.” PayPal’s new payment m...

Visa is accelerating its efforts to dominate the mobile payment space, Reuters reported on Monday. Visa is no stranger to mobile payments. It began trialing an iPhone NFC payment solution in Europe early this year, has plans to work with Samsung on a system for the 2012 Olympics, and recently announced that it has partnered with ISIS for the development of a mobile payment network in the United States. “As mobile payments and other chip-based emerging technologies are poised to take off in the coming ye...

141.1 million people around the world will make mobile payments this year, a 38.2% increase from last year, Gartner said in a new report issued on Friday. Global mobile payment volume is expected to hit $86.1 billion in 2011, up 75.9% from the $48.9 billion recorded last year. Gartner says mobile payments are not growing as fast as originally projected due to slower than expected uptake in developing countries. In addition, the “complexity of the [NFC]” service model has impeded its ability to tak...

MasterCard announced earlier this week that it would partner with with ISIS to help foster the growth of NFC-based mobile payment solutions in the U.S. ISIS, formed in November last year by Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile, intends to deliver a complete mobile wallet solution that ambitiously aims to replace cash, credit cards, debit cards, coupons and more with one comprehensive mobile solution. So we know about ISIS and now we know MasterCard is on board, but MasterCard is hardly a newcomer in the...

American Express, Discover, MasterCard, and Visa announced a new partnership with ISIS on Tuesday. ISIS is a mobile initiative that was formed in April of last year by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless in an effort to help foster the growth of using near-field communications for mobile payments. It’s currently being tested in Salt Lake City and Austin. Tuesday’s announcement means that, as the mobile market moves closer and closer to a time when we can actually use our phones to make tap-an...

According to a new study published by Juniper Research, the value of near-field communications (NFC) purchases, mobile-sourced money transfers, and mobile payments for digital and physical goods, will reach $670 billion by 2015. That’s a substantial jump up from the $240 billion Juniper Research has pegged for the total value of mobile payments this year. The research firm said that during the next 18 months, 20 countries will begin deploying NFC payment systems and services; transactions from those ser...

Verizon Wireless announced a new partnership with Payfone on Monday that will soon allow its customers using phones, tablets, and PCs to make online purchases easier. Once the partnership’s new service is deployed, customers will be able to make more secure purchases online and charge them to their Verizon Wireless bill or use other standard forms of payment. “Our relationship with Payfone complements the part of the mobile payments equation we’re already working on with our Isis joint venture,&...

HP is working on phones and tablets with built-in near-field communication (NFC) technology for mobile payments, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Much like Google Wallet, which will soon launch for the Nexus S and eventually other Android devices, HP hopes its customers will be able to use the company’s products to make mobile purchases in retail outlets. Similarly, HP has a plan to create an entire ecosystem where users will be able to to receive coupons or other benefits, such as loyalty points, from NFC...

Google may have just unveiled its preliminary plans to bring contactless mobile payments to the U.S., but mobile payments in using various technologies are prime to blow up in several other markets around the world as well. Swedish wireless analyst firm Berg Insight on Thursday issued a report on mobile money in emerging markets, and the group believes adoption will skyrocket over the next four years. In 2010 there were 133 million people in emerging markets who used their cell phones to move money or pay for...

During a press conference in New York City today, Google officially took the wraps off of its Google Wallet and Google Offers mobile payment services. Google confirmed that it is working with banks, retailers, and other partners to allow users to make mobile payments with their cell phones. “Your phone will be your wallet,” Google’s VP of Commerce, Stephanie Tilenius, said. “Just tap, pay and save.” Initial partners include Citi, MasterCard, Macy’s, Subway, Walgreens, and S...

Google has been working on a mobile payment service for quite some time now, and the company is finally ready to take the wraps off of the first iteration of its contactless payment product. Google has been buying up talent — and someone spilled the beans this past Tuesday — so we can’t say the announcement is likely to come as much of a surprise. Yes, Google is expected to finally take the wraps off its Google Wallet service, which will use NFC-based technology to allow consumers to pay for goods w...

Sources speaking with Bloomberg claim Google is finally ready to take the wraps off its mobile payment service. According to a new report, Google will host an event on Thursday, May 26th to introduce its new service, which will initially be available only to Sprint subscribers in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, D.C. who own the company’s Nexus S 4G smartphone. The system will be NFC-based, and Bloomberg did not specify which retail partners would support Google’s in...

According to a Bernstein note issued on Monday morning, Apple’s fifth-generation iPhone will not include Near field communication (NFC) capabilities as had been previously rumored on several occasions. NFC, which will be featured in RIM’s 2011 BlackBerry smartphone lineup, allows cell phones and other devices to transmit data wirelessly over short distances. Unlike Bluetooth, NFC connections do not require a pairing process, so NFC is well suited for applications such as mobile payments, as it is ...