On the web:

• For Banks, Tech Frontier Fraught With Pitfalls - Wall Street Journal
• Apple, Not Carriers, Will Drive NFC Growth - Rethink Wireless

On the wires:

• New Packaged Facts Report on Private Label Credit Card Industry
• Eastern Bank Chooses Elan Financial Services to Launch New Credit Card Program
• ViVOtech Contactless EMV and NFC Payment Software Powers Tri-Reader 3 for Cubic Transportation Systems
• NetSecure Announces Free Kudos Mobile Credit Card Terminals for Non-Profits and Charities
• Navy Federal Boosts Credit Card Rewards for Over a Million Members; Powered by Cartera Commerce
• Failsafe Payments Adds SafetyPay to CertoConnect
• Transaction Wireless to Power Buffalo Wild Wings Gift Cards
• New Mercator Report on Prepaid Industry

On the web:

• RIM Waits on Carrier Plans for NFC with new BlackBerry Line - FierceWireless

On the wires:

• ViVOtech Ships EMV Payments and NFC mCommerce-Ready Reader
• Sprint Selects American Express for Rebate Cards
• Citi Renews Credit Card Issuing Relationship with Shell
• Yardi PAYscan Mobile (for Mobile Invoicing) Available at Apple’s App Store
• Citi Introduces the New ThankYou® Rewards App
• Dynamics Announces Manufacturing and Personalization Facility for Electronic Stripe Cards

On the web:

• Citigroup Confirms $2.7 Million Stolen by Hackers - Wall Street Journal
• NFC Market Trial Fails, Says ANZ Bank - ZDNet Australia
• Banking Industry Now Seeking Swipe Fee Implementation Delay - Convenience Store News
• Bank Lobbyist To Fed: Go Easy On Us - Forbes
• How Debit Card Swipe Fee Changes Will Cost You, the Consumer - TIME.com
• What Are You Signing Away With a Signature Instead of a PIN? - Portals and Rails
• Spat between Visa and China UnionPay spills into BC Card in Korea - ChinaDaily.com
• PayPal Hits 100 Million Active Users - TechCrunch

On the wires:

• Paymate Acquires ACT Merchant Services
• CashPlus: Prepaid MasterCard Helping Councils to Cut Costs
• ViVOtech Closes $24 Million In Additional Series C Funding
• ActivePath Drives Paperless Adoption in Brazil for Global Top 3 Credit Card Issuer

On the wires:

• Citi Commercial Cards Launches Citi Project Card
• Bill.com Expands Mobile Offering
• Sequent Selects ViVOtech to Provide Trusted Service Manager Software for NFC Mobile Payments

On the web:

• CUinsight: Wescom Resources Group to Market PayPal P2P Solution to Credit Unions
• Marketing Magazine: Starbucks Announces UK Contactless Payment Trial

On the wires:

• VeriFone and Hypercom Comment on U.S. Department of Justice Civil Complaint
• ViVOtech Ready, Willing, Able to Buy Hypercom U.S. Assets
• Maponics First to Offer Shopping Boundaries
• Walt Levengood Joins aurionPro as President, Payments

On the web:

• New York Times: Small Banks and Debit-Card Reform (by Simon Johnson)
• Bloomberg: Bernanke Says Debit ‘Swipe’ Rules May Cause (Small) Bank Failures
• Reuters: Dodd-Frank Hurt Mobile Payment System Plans, Says AT&T
• Forbes: Time For A Facebook Credit Card
• Wall Street Journal: Debit-Card Scam Targets Michaels Shoppers

On the wires:

• MIFARE4Mobile Industry Group Announces Roadmap
• Pitney Bowes Announces International Ecommerce SuiteApp for NetSuite’s SuiteCloud Computing Platform
• Zuora Launches Z-NetSuite, Combining Cloud-based Subscription Management and ERP/Financials
• Hypercom Introduces Next Generation Network Technology for ISOs
• RocketPay to offer Planet Payment’s Multi-Currency Pricing Service
• ViVOtech Introduces POS Add-On NFC Reader for Delivering Personalized Shopping and Quick Check Out

On the web:

• NFC World: Google Raises Concerns Over the Viability of NFC card Emulation Mode for Mobile Payments (with Video)
• MSNBC: Crowded Coupon Industry Competes for Users

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

Monitise has announced that it has joined forces with ViVOtech to deliver mobile phone payments services to banks across the United States.

The partnership means customers of participating banks will be able to turn their handset into a mobile wallet (linked to registered bank accounts, credit and debit cards) and purchase items using contactless payments at merchants with NFC capabilities.

Curious about mobile payments, but tired of reading the small print? Glenbrook's Carol Coye Benson has compiled a collection of how-they-work videos. Included are videos from Bling Nation, PayNearMe, Square, BOKU, Intuit GoPayment, PayPal Mobile, VivoTech, Oberthur, MobilePay, MocaPay, and FaceCash.

Seven players in the Near Field Communication (NFC) ecosystem, Ericsson, Gemalto, NXP, Oberthur Technologies, STMicroelectronics, Venyon, and ViVOtech have announced they are forming a MIFARE4Mobile Industry Group that will "enable its members to collaborate and work together to standardize and advance the uniform management of MIFARE™ applications on NFC-enabled secure elements, such as SIM cards, and mobile phones." READ MORE »

Edgar, Dunn & Company has announced the release of "Citi Tap and Pay mobile NFC proximity payments pilot - Bengaluru, Results & Findings" by Samee Zafar and Pascal Burg. The white paper discusses the Citi Tap and Pay pilot service launched in Bengaluru, India in July 2009. According to the company, "with over 3000 customers, 250 merchant locations and nearly 50,000 purchases made, the recently concluded 26-week pilot is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive next-generation contactless credit card payments pilot ever undertaken based on Near Field Communications technology." READ MORE »

ViVOtech has announced the launch of its ViVOtag sticker solution and its backend ViVOapps mLoyalty redemption software designed to "enable merchants to deliver targeted and engaging mobile advertising, marketing and loyalty programs to customers’ existing mobile phones." READ MORE »

ViVOtech has announced that its NFC mobile payment wallet, Over-the-Air (OTA) provisioning, smart posters, coupon delivery and redemption technologies have been successfully deployed in Citi Tap and Pay, a pilot service that brings to India next-generation contactless credit card payments based on this emerging technology. Launched in July in the city of Bengaluru in India, Citi Tap and Pay is one of the world's largest and most comprehensive NFC mobile payment pilots.a READ MORE »

Wright Express has announced that its multi-city NFC mobile payment pilot with Sheetz and ViVOtech has been successfully completed. According to the company, "during the trial, drivers used their Sheetz Fleet Business Advantage card loaded into their specially enabled Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phones to make fuel and convenience store purchases at hundreds of Sheetz locations by just waving their NFC mobile phones at contactless-enabled readers. Wright Express was able to authorize and process the mobile transactions as easily as those done by drivers using plastic cards." READ MORE »

Cubic Transportation Systems has announced it is providing new capabilities for the Cubic designed Tri-Reader® to enable an all-in-one reader that will process bank cards, prepaid cards and smart card-enabled mobile phones through an exclusive software development and licensing agreement with ViVOtech, a provider of point-of-sale (POS) readers for contactless and Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phone payments. READ MORE »

ViVOtech has announced that it has closed an $8.6m extension to its Series C round of funding from its existing investors, bringing the total investment in its series C round to more than $40m. Separately, the company also announced that it has been awarded a key NFC-related software patent by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Patent number 7,469,151 was awarded on December 23rd 2008 and covers" a broad range of methods, systems and products for over the air (OTA) provisioning of credit, debit, prepaid, loyalty and other payment or non-payment cards into mobile phone devices through wireless networks or the internet." READ MORE »

Sheetz convenience stores and Wright Express have announced the launch of a multi-city trial of a new technology that enables drivers to make fuel purchases at Sheetz locations using their mobile phones. READ MORE »

ViVOtech has announced that Don Kingsborough, CEO and found of Blackhawk Network, has been named to its Board of Directors. READ MORE »

Libercard, ViVOtech and Inteligensa have announced they have "collaborated to develop the first Transit & Retail combination contactless payment implementation in Latin America. With the new technology, Brazilians in the city of Fortaleza use a single contactless payment card to ride local transit and make retail purchases. Libercard has enabled tens of thousands of transit riders with dual-purpose prepaid contactless cards to ride transit, pay for purchases and perform top-ups at several hundred retail stores in Fortaleza that use ViVOtech contactless payment devices implemented with Inteligensa integration expertise." READ MORE »

ViVOtech has announced that its NFC mobile payment wallet, Over-the-Air (OTA) payment, coupon delivery and redemption technologies are being used jointly by NETS, SingTel and United Overseas Bank Ltd. (UOB) for an NFC mobile phone payment trial in Singapore. READ MORE »

USA Technologies and ViVOtech have announced entering into an agreement by which ViVOtech would provide 25,000 contactless/magstripe card readers for USAT’s ePort technology.

ViVOtech has announced that it has secured an equity investment from Citi to develop mobile commerce technologies. Terms were not disclosed.

paybox and ViVOtech have announced they are partnering "to extend NFC-enabled remote and proximity m-Payments anytime and anywhere, in virtually any e-Commerce or m-Commerce scenario."

BART has announced that "a select group of BART riders is helping to launch a first-in-the-nation technological trial that will allow participants to walk up to any BART fare gate with a specially-equipped Sprint wireless phone and pay for their ride by tagging the phone on a reader located on top of the gate."

ViVOtech has announced that its "ViVOnfc infrastructure software for Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phone payments is being used by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in its first NFC mobile phone payment launch in conjunction with MasterCard at the MasterCard Masters Golf Tournament."

NCR in partnership with ViVOtech has announced a suite of contactless payment terminals for the point of sale (POS) that "enable mobile and contactless payment at a variety of customer touch points, including retail checkout, restaurant drive-thru and the diner’s table."

Mark Schwanhausser writes for the San Jose Mercury News about contactless payments and Santa Clara, CA-based Vivotech, a major provider of contactless payment acceptance devices. Vivotech has announced closing a $22.5 million Series C financing round. Strategic investors in the round include First Data Corp. and NCR (here's the NCR press release announcing their participation in the financing).

ViVOtech and mFoundry have announced they will be working together to "provide mobile financial services to wireless customers. mFoundry’s and ViVOtech’s technologies, when combined, give consumers a simple new way to use their mobile phone for contactless payments, banking and commerce."

Business Week takes a look at mobile banking and payments - including Citibank's pilot with Obopay, PayPal Mobile, Firethorn and First Data's efforts including last week's investment in VIVOtech.

First Data Corp. has announced a strategic investment in ViVOtech and that it plans to use ViVOtech's collection of emerging technologies that include Near Field Communication (NFC) terminals and mobile commerce enablement. According to First Data, its investment will come in the form of acting as the lead investor in ViVOtech's Series C round of financing.