Mobile-Payment Services Grow

A handful of mobile-payment start-ups are gaining support from major finance players.

Square, started by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, goes live next year and allows merchants to swipe credit and debit cards through an iPhone attachment called a “square.”

The squares will be available for other phones, including Androids and BlackBerrys, later on, he said, and merchants will get squares for free. Visa (V), MasterCard (MA) and American Express (AXP) have already signed on.

This week, Popmoney, a service from CashEdge, went live. It’s currently available at only two financial institutions, but will expand to seven in coming months, Neal Platt, Popmoney’s senior vice president, said. (CashEdge already has various institutions as clients elsewhere, including Bank of America and Citibank.)

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