Glenbrook's Erin McCune is fresh off a two-day, marathon blogging experience at Finovate Spring 2012 San Francisco. Her notes, over on Payments Views, highlight the key take aways from the sixty-four startup companies that were on hand to pitch their financial innovation.

Visa and Obopay have announced a collaboration to enable near real-time payment solutions for disbursing electronic funds to a prepaid card.

“By introducing a Visa prepaid card solution, Obopay offers near real-time disbursement capabilities that allow our customers to avoid the time delay of issuing cash or check,” said David Schwartz, vice president of product and corporate marketing for Obopay. “Adding Visa prepaid cards to Obopay Disbursements enables our partners to send funds to any consumer in the U.S. at dramatically lower costs compared to issuing checks while they can also greatly increase the satisfaction of customers.”

First Data has released its First Data SpendTrend analysis for the full month of April 2012 compared to April 2011.

Overall year-over-year dollar volume growth was 5.7% in April, down from March’s 8.7% growth. Transaction growth slowed to 5.8% in April, down from 9.3% in March. Despite the slowdown in overall year-over-year dollar volume and transaction growth, discretionary spending was healthy in April.

SpendTrend tracks same-store consumer spending by credit, signature debit, PIN debit, EBT cards and checks at U.S. merchant locations.

PayPal and SOFTBANK announced that the two companies plan to establish a joint venture company, "PayPal Japan", to build a digital payments business in Japan.

The joint venture will bring together the strengths of both companies - PayPal's global online and mobile payment solutions with 110 million active accounts in 190 markets and 25 currencies, along with the SOFTBANK Group's local market knowledge, 29 million mobile subscribers and vast distribution network including thousands of retail outlets and sales staff across Japan.

PayPal and SOFTBANK also announced PayPal Here in Japan as the fifth "availability" country along side the USA, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

Flint Mobile announced the Beta launch of its first offering, a mobile POS app for small businesses on-the-go, as well as the close of its $3 million Series A.

"Flint will be a game changer in the world of mobile payments for small businesses," said Alex Mendez, Founding Managing Director of Storm Ventures. "They have created a simple approach that couples payments and social marketing to provide a huge leap forward for the mobile small businesses that form the backbone of our economy. The Flint team consists of seasoned executives who have created market-leading products, and we're very excited to be teaming up with them."

More info is available at www.flintmo.com.

On the web:

• It's Apple vs. Google vs. Everyone In The Mobile Payments War - Forbes

On the wires:

• 99Bill's Smartphone Card Reader to Enable Mobile POS in China
• Major Retail Brands Select VeriFone GlobalBay Mobile POS
• RunningShoes.com Activates New MasterCard PayPass Online Wallet
• Ogone Named as European Launch Partner for PayPass Wallet Services by MasterCard
• ESI Partners with InstaMed to Launch Electronic Healthcare Payment Solutions
• AmEx to Launch American Express® Campus Edition Prepaid Card in 500 Campus Bookstores