Digital Wallets

Starbucks says one in five transactions are made using the loyalty card, that more than one-third of its customers own smartphones, and that three-quarters of those people use a BlackBerry or an iPhone. Starbucks took in a whopping  $1.5 billion on Starbucks Cards last year, a 21 percent increase over 2009.

PayPal has been in the payments business roughly 12 years and boasts 98 million users. Last quarter, the company did nearly $1 billion in revenue, about 39% of eBay's total revenue--by comparison, Square hopes to "process" $1 billion worth of payments for the entire year, meaning it'll just take a tiny percentage cut of that money for itself.

Visa is striving to make all non-cash purchases as simple as possible. For web-based commerce, that means eliminating the steps where you have to enter your credit card information and billing address, and condensing identity into a single login and user ID.

On the PayPal blog today, the company announced that PayPal has acquired Fig Card, which has developed a way for merchants to accept mobile payments by using a low-cost USB device that plugs into the cash register or point-of-sale terminal. Customers will have to install the Fig app on their smartphones.

Discover, Barclaycard, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon have a name for their mobile phone-based payment system: Isis. Essentially it remains what we heard from Bloomberg a few months back: a system for using an app on your phone to send payments to a POS system using NFC technology.

Bank of America N.A., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo—have banded together to create a person-to-person payment system dubbed clearXchange. Now in testing in Arizona, the system enables the banks’ customers to transfer money to other customers of any of the three banks using a mobile phone number or e-mail address.

Verifone announced Tuesday it would expand its ability to accept payments through PayPal’s system in an effort to reach a wider customer base. Users who currently use PayPal to transfer money or make payments would be able to use VeriFone’s PAYware Mobile card encryption sleeve for iPhone.

The age of rifling through your purse or wallet for a coupon, considering you have not already misplaced it last week, is becoming a thing of the past. Companies such as BillShrink, Bankons and Edo Interactive have developed programs, both online and mobile, to help people save money on everyday purchases.

Not many people doubt Square is a handy tool for small businesses on the go: Square is an app designed to process credit card payments using just an iPhone or iPad and a tiny credit card-reading attachment. What people might doubt, however, is the security of any application that stores users’ bank account information.

The digital wallet will store Visa and non-Visa payments accounts, support NFC payments and deliver a wide range of transaction services including e-commerce, mobile commerce, micropayments, social networks and person-to-person payments.

eBay acquired a company through its PayPal subsidiary called Fig Card that lets brick-and-mortar retailers accept mobile payments in stores by using a low-cost USB device that plugs into cash registers and point-of-sale terminals - all the customer needs is an app on their smartphone.

American Express just launched a big new payments service called Serve.

The big, lofty goal is to replace cash and credit cards -- eventually.

So if people love it, Serve could potentially be trouble for the traditional banks and credit card companies, and also for services like PayPal, Square, Venmo, etc.

The mobile wallet is getting closer to becoming reality as Payment Alliance International and MagTek partner to introduce a new way to perform secure, card-less ATM transactions.

The mobile payment startup Square has announced two apps for smart phones and tablets that work in conjunction to let you pay by simply giving a store clerk your name.

The apps, one for consumers, Card Case, and one for store owners, Register, take the place of a cash register

Visa has infused Square, a mobile payment company, with a cash investment of “single-digit millions,” the Los Angeles Times reports. The partnership will help Square to reach more companies currently only accepting cash or checks and enable them to accept credit cards.

Mobile payments are coming, and there are many paths being beaten to get them to our phones. Google-backed mobile payments startup Corduro launches this week with a combined mobile wallet/payments processor for Android and the iPhone (which will be available in the respective app stores later this week).