The latest PYMNTS/InfoScout mobile payments adoption stats are in — and it’s now pretty clear, Karen Webster says. After nine quarters of asking thousands of consumers why (or why they didn’t) choose Apple, Android, Samsung or Walmart Pay to check out in a physical store, consumers don’t seem that interested in a new way to pay at an old checkout experience in a store. That spells trouble if you’re Apple Pay and here in the U.S., Webster says, and probably in China and India too. But maybe not if you’re Walmart Pay, where usage has, in just one year, comethisclose to levels that it’s taken Apple Pay three years to achieve — but not consistently maintain. We have all of the details (and lots of charts, too).  Read More...

The HTC ChaCha, Salsa and First Phones. Oculus virtual reality headsets. The Eutelsat satellite. So far, Facebook has had terrible luck with hardware projects — but that’s not stopping the social media giant from throwing its hat into the ring in the smart home speaker race. The company reportedly has a basic home speaker as well as a video chat device in the works at its Building 8 hardware lab.   Read More...

xPressTap: mPOS Without The Dongle

Micromerchants don’t need special equipment to accept cash or PayPal transactions from their customers. So why can’t accepting credit, debit, and mobile wallet be as simple — and as deviceless?  It can be, Joe Lynam, CEO and Co-Founder of xPressTap, tells Karen Webster. Tapp2App turns every NFC-enabled smartphone into a POS, he says, with just the tap of an app. See how it works.  Read More...