Yankee Group has announced a new report that indicates while mobile transaction usage is growing, consumers show little willingness to pay for these services.

The company’s forecasts predict unprecedented growth in mobile transactions worldwide, with the total value of global mobile transactions increasing from $162 billion in 2010 to $984 billion in 2014. However, Yankee Group’s consumer survey results show that less than 10 percent of respondents would be willing to pay extra for mobile transaction services such as mobile banking, mobile coupons and mobile payments.

Utiba has announced a new initiative targeting the international mobile remittances market. "The new initiative offers a neutral corridor routing and currency exchange clearinghouse for mobile-to-mobile and traditional money remittances."

VeriFone and LifeNexus, the developer of the iChip and Personal Health Card, have announced an agreement to provide iChip acceptance software on VeriFone payment acceptance solutions. "The LifeNexus Personal Health Card is the first multi-purpose electronic health card utilizing the embedded iChip for securely maintaining an individual’s health record and incorporates a payment card option."

Ixaris has released an international report that identifies the most significant innovations that will change the payments landscape in 2011. "The new report, ‘Payments Innovation 2011 – The Global Jury Decides’, brings together the expertise of 22 banking innovators and experts from around the globe, drawn from 14 countries across five continents. It focuses on understanding the challenges facing the payments industry and their impact on innovation in the next 12 months."

Apple has announced a new subscription service available to all publishers of content-based apps on the App Store, including magazines, newspapers, video, music, etc. "Subscriptions purchased from within the App Store will be sold using the same App Store billing system that has been used to buy billions of apps and In-App Purchases."

MasterCard, Symantec and NagraID Security have teamed up to introduce the MasterCard “Display Card”, which brings strong authentication functionality to payment cards to the U.S.

Recently piloted and launched in Europe and Asia, the 'Display Card' complements existing card security features through the use of Symantec’s VeriSign® Identity Protection (VIP) Authentication Service and NagraID Security card technology.

Over on Payments Views, our sister blog, Glenbrook's Russ Jones shares his thoughts on where POS steering may be headed this year, commenting "several of Glenbrook’s merchant clients are already developing their strategies for rewarding customers that select low cost payment methods at the point of sale."

nuBridges has announced nuBridges Protect Tokenization as a Service (TaaS), the "first cloud-based tokenization service for national and multi-national companies that want to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Electronic Health Records (EHR) to improve security, reduce risk, ease compliance and minimize data security costs. Hosted by Verizon Business on its Computing as a Service (CaaS) platform, the new service is equally adept at protecting payment cards to help merchants comply with the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)."

New research by Accenture shows that 45% of the most active mobile device users would welcome the opportunity to pay for goods and services using their mobile phone, despite the fact that 73% expressed significant privacy and identity theft concerns.

Consumers in Asia were the most enthusiastic about mobile commerce. Overall, 69% of survey respondents in Asia indicated they favored using mobile phones for most payments... in the U.S. and Europe, combined, however, only 26% of respondents favored using mobile phones for most payments.

On the wires:

• CashStar Raises $5 Million for Digital Gifting and Incentives Innovation
• Faster Payments Highlight CheckFree RXP Update from Fiserv
• Adknowledge Unveils Mobile Monetization Solution for Apple App Developers
• Maritz Real-Time and ViVOtech Partner on NFC-Based Promotions and Loyalty Services
• First Data Selects Beanstream to Drive Its Payment Platform in Canada
• MetroBank and Accertify Announce Partnership to Fight Credit Card in Latin America
• DeviceFidelity Makes More Smartphones Available for Visa Mobile Contactless Payments
• HomeATM-AnywhereCommerce and CardinalCommerce Partner on Online PIN Debits
• NETBANX To Embedded Support for ParentMail +Pay School Payments System (UK)

On the web:

• All Things Digital: Square Wants to Replace Everything, From the Receipt to the Register
• Cleartrip Blog: How India's Banks Killed the Future of Commerce (with Strong Authentication)
• New York Times: Google's Schmidt Sees Payments as a Big Business