Visa Europe is enforcing its alliance with Monitise, a company providing mobile phone banking and payment technology. Visa Europe, which became independent of Visa Inc. in 2007, is investing £24.7 million in Monitise. As part of the subscription, Visa Europe President and Chief Executive Peter Ayliffe will join Monitise’s Board as a non-executive director.

Monitise and Visa Europe entered into a partnership in February 2011 to develop and supply mobile payments services for Visa Europe’s member banks and financial institutions. That partnership gives Visa Europe a licence to Monitise’s mobile banking technology. Monitise provides mobile banking, payments and commerce networks worldwide. In September this year, Visa Europe announced Visa Mobile Person-to-Person payments and Visa Alerts, two mobile payment services that were developed in partnership with Monitise.

Monitise believes the market opportunities for its mobile technology business are better today than at any time before. The companies Chief Executive Alastair Lukies stated: “Visa Europe’s investment in Monitise … establishes our role as the platform of choice for mobile money services in Europe. We are excited by the opportunities ahead for Monitise and the global mobile money industry as mobiles increasingly become the accepted new way to bank, pay and shop.”

Multicard, supplier of credential and identity solutions, announced the expanded roll‐out of its mobile payment solution across the Netherlands. The service called “Cashless Betalen” is the account management solution behind the digital wallet offered by the Dutch Rabobank.

Digital wallet customers will be issued a near field communications (NFC) sticker that can be affixed at the back of a mobile phone. To purchase items, the user taps the device on the point of sale (POS) terminal at check out. The Cashless Betalen interface can be accessed with any Internet connection or an app available for iOS and Android . It allows users to manage their accounts, checking account balances, transferring funds and depositing, monitoring and making payments on their mobile devices.

The service initially started in Dutch hockey clubs in July. According to the company, there are already more than 150,000 people using the digital wallet. “If widely adopted in Holland, we believe that Cashless Betalen would represent the largest digital wallet community outside Japan in the near term,” commented Pieter Kooistra, managing director of Multicard Netherlands.

comScore, an internet marketing research company, released an analysis of mobile financial services usage in the U.S. The comScore Mobile Financial Advisor is a quarterly report that combines insights from comScore MobiLens and a dedicated re-contact survey focused on mobile financial services.

According to the report 32.5 million Americans accessed mobile banking information on their devices at the end of Q2 2011 in June, representing 13.9 percent of all mobile users. The study also revealed that 12.7 million mobile users reported using banking apps, a increase of 45 percent from Q4 2010.

Mobile Banking and Credit Card Usage See Highest Increases in Visitation

“New apps and mobile-enhanced sites have made it easier for customers to seek out financial information using mobile devices. With tablets and other web-enabled connected devices gaining popularity in addition to smartphones, financial service institutions are poised for additional growth in mobile access,” said Sarah Lenart, comScore vice president for Marketing Solutions.

Tech start-up Pygg (pronounced ‘pig’) launched its social payment app Pygg for Twitter. The service allows users to transfer money directly to their Twitter friends. Pygg is a collaboration between Pollenizer, a co-founder of start-up web businesses in Australia, and founding investors Rohan Lund and Tim Howard.

The company announced to extend the service beyond Twitter, with Pygg for email, Facebook and other social applications soon. The first release, Pygg for Twitter, can be used to pay Twitter friends for goods or services, without the need for exchanging bank details or email addresses. The service incudes a web interface with additional functionality like the possibility to withdraw money from Pygg accounts and a transaction timeline. Pygg is currently limited to Australian Dollars, accounts can be charged via PayPal or credit card.

a Pygg payment embedded in a tweet

“We live in an increasingly cashless community and yet cash remains the dominant way to settle transactions between friends and family, preferred to existing cumbersome electronic alternatives. Disruption will come by simplifying transactions and providing a network for managing money in a social context,” said Tim Howard, Pygg founding investor.

Research In Motion’s (RIM) BlackBerry Bold 9900 and BlackBerry Curve 9360 smartphones are the first SIM-based NFC smartphones to be certified as MasterCard PayPass-approved devices. The certification was granted by MasterCard on the basis of the smartphones meeting the functionality, interoperability and security requirements. With this certification, any MasterCard PayPass-issuing bank will be able to set up PayPass-enabled accounts to the SIM card of these devices.

MasterCard PayPass is a contactless payment method based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology. The service lets consumers make purchases by tapping a credit card or other payment device instead of swiping or inserting a card. MasterCard’s PayPass solution is available at more than 300,000 merchant locations worldwide.

The credit card company also partners with mobile NFC payment platforms Google Wallet and ISIS. Through the launch of new NFC-enabled devises, the contactless payment solution continues to gain momentum. “The availability of NFC on popular BlackBerry smartphones is an important milestone for the mobile contactless payments business,” stated Mung Ki Woo, Group Executive Mobile at MasterCard.

Mobile payment provider Fortumo introduced its cross-platform payment service for HTML5 apps. The Estonia-based company offers premium SMS services and provides an international m-payment platform.

Fortumo will upgrade its Pay-by-Mobile service to support HTML5 apps. According to the company, the service enables game and app developers to monetize users of mobile web apps, on any mobile device, with single integration. The cross-platform system is available in 59 countries and supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Symbian, Java and Bada. On Fortumo’s official blog, Martin Koppel, Co-Founder and CRO of Fortumo, explained: “Mobile world is not just divided between Android and iOS. More and more developers are taking cross-platform strategy in order to optimize development cost, minimize time to market and reduce platform risk… With this upgrade Pay by Mobile is now truly a cross-platform payments tool which looses the barriers between pc and mobile. For developers it is 1 single integration, but the whole use experience on clients’ side depends on which device the service is consumed.”

Mobile payments are booming, mobile carrier billing and premium SMS are still a strong alternative to other payment methods since users don’t have to register or provide credit card details.

Facebook starts to expand its virtual currency Facebook Credits beyond its social network platform. The initiative “Facebook Credits for websites” enables websites to process payments for virtual goods using Facebook Credits. Facebook announced a partnership with GameHouse, the RealNetworks games division, to test Facebook Credits with the UNO Boost and Collapse! Blast online games on GameHouse.com.

Facebook Credits is the mandatory virtual currency that enables people to buy items in games and applications on the Facebook platform. Of all revenue earned through Credits, Facebook keeps a 30% share. The social network company accepts MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover, JCB, PayPal and various local payment methods worldwide to purchase credits within Facebook.

Facebook did not disclose if they plan to expand the program to other websites, at the moment the company is focused on “gathering early developer feedback”. By turning Credits into a micropayment service available to anyone, Facebook could become a serious competitor of PayPal, Amazon and Google the emerging online payment market.

Australian Commonwealth Bank today announced the launch of Kaching, a mobile payment app for iPhone that features peer-to-peer payments along with NFC (Near Field Communication) contactless payment technology.

Kaching will be the first commercial mobile banking and payment app to integrate NFC technology in Australia. The service combines P2P payments via the phone’s contacts, email addresses and the user’s Facebook friends along with NFC contactless technology. Since the iPhone does not natively support NFC, the bank will issue a NFC enabled iCarte case to its customers. The bank has partnered with MasterCard, so its clients can use MasterCard’s contactless PayPass terminals to pay at retail stores.

Commonwealth Bank has experienced enormous growth in its online banking service, NetBank in recent years. In August this year, over 16 million logons were made to NetBank using a mobile device. According to the company, this represents a 229% increase from the same period last year. David Lindberg, Executive General Manager Cards, Payments and Retail Strategy said: “Mobile and online social payment is the next step in transaction technology… Now, for the first time, Australian consumers will no longer have to rely on cash or cards to make payments to family, friends or even businesses. The recent explosion in uptake of digital and smartphone technology has revolutionised how we all transact, interact and communicate with each other, and this new application will make the dream of mobile payments a reality.”

The GAME Group, a European pc and video games retailer, has partnered with prepaid payment services provider InComm to launch a new online payment service called GAMEwallet. The service will offer customers an alternative to debit and credit cards when paying online for digital content.

Titles from a number of publishers and developers will be marketed in one place with customers able to buy items within them using their GAMEwallet. This replaces the current system, which requires customers to have separate payment accounts for each online game. ”The digital games market is growing fast, but two things are holding it back: the reliance on customers using credit or debit cards online, and the lack of a one-stop shop offering advice across a wide range of titles from different publishers. We’re about to change that,” commented Tricia Brennan, Game Group Commercial Strategy Director.

Square’s credit card reader will be available in Walmart in the US soon, increasing the number of retail stores where it is sold to more than 9,000, as reported by Bloomberg today.

The Square app, which is available for Apple iOS or Google Android, enables individuals and businesses to accept payments on their mobile devices. It can be used either by swiping the card on the card reader that plugs into the headphone jack, or by manually entering the details on the phone. The app is available for free at the App Store and Android Market.

The card reader is sold for $10 and comes with a $10 redemption code. Square earns its money by charging a fee of 2.75% on every credit card transaction. The service is only available in the US, its European counterpart iZettle recently received $11.2 million in Series A funding.

The company was founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Jim McKelvey and publicly launched in October 2010. The service has seen widespread adoption since its launch and is now processing $2B in payments per year. PayPal, by comparison, expects more than $3.5B in mobile volume this year.

Check out the video to see Square in action: