Apple Pay is all very warm and seamless in that Apple sort of way. Selected credit is easily slotted neatly into the Passbook linked to each phone, which then enables payments with Apple Pay. There is no messing about opening apps - simply hold the phone near the point of sale, hit the Touch ID, and as Apple itself says, "You don’t even have to look at the screen…a subtle vibration and beep let you know." Easy!  The initial Apple Pay launch focused on North America, with Apple signing up an impressive array of banks and merchants

Leather goods maker Coach’s new stand-alone mobile application plays on its Peanuts collection and features fun photo activities. The collection features the American comic strip characters, and the app taps social by going beyond simply its shopping component. By including fun factors, Coach builds awareness for its Peanuts Collection of products and provides a platform to introduce its future products.

Soft Space, a Southeast Asian white-label mobile point-of-sale platform maker, announced today that it has acquired Fasspay, a payment service provider based in Malaysia. The acquisition price was undisclosed. Soft Space currently partners with 14 banks in the Southeast Asian region, where its point-of-sale systems are used. The company says it shipped more than 35,000 readers in less than two years and is projected to process up to $1 billion in credit card transactions this year. 

MCX (Merchant Customer Exchange), the coalition of retailers including Walmart, Best Buy, Gap and others, who are backing a mobile payments solution CurrentC meant to rival newcomer Apple Pay, has been hacked. The data breach involves the theft of email addresses, however, not the CurrentC mobile application, the company confirms to TechCrunch. Within the last 36 hours, MCX says it learned that unauthorized third parties obtained the email addresses of some of its CurrentC pilot program participants and other individuals who had expressed interest in the app.

McDonald’s is a mobile marketing leader but with same-store sales dropping 3.3 percent in the most recent quarter, the chain’s experience highlights the need for mobile to be paired with the right message and products to be successful. While the fast food conglomerate has seen disappointing sales in Asia and Europe, many reports are placing some of the blame on its increasingly complicated menu. 

Alipay, the payments subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holdings Ltd., is extending its payment services to Western retailers starting with U.S. It has launched a new service dubbed as “ePass” which would enable U.S. retailers to e-commerce shoppers in China. ePass doesn’t offer a translation service as of now, so initially it would target shoppers who know English well. The new service would help U.S. retailers target around 500 million Chinese online shoppers.

Sky Bet Title sponsor of the English Football League introduced wireless location based technology, iBeacons to Championship Football Stadiums Elland Road (Leeds United) and The New York Stadium (Rotherham United) this weekend. iBeacons, are Bluetooth transmitters, which allow for localised messaging when customers/consumers are in-range with a beacon signal. Sky Bet trailed the new Apple proximity messaging technology, sending ‘push’ notifications and engagement messages to football fans attending Leeds United Vs Wolves at Elland Road football stadium. SkyBet management confirmed that the test project could lead to a roll-out to Football League stadiums nationwide.

A growing application development backlog problem is damaging revenue opportunities in the enterprise, with 85 percent of companies having a mobile backlog of between 1 and 20 apps, while 50 percent have a backlog of between 10 and 20 apps, according to a new report. The report, Mobile App Backlog is Directly Damaging Revenue in the Enterprise, reveals that one reason for the backlog is a lack of mobile developer talent, with only 6 percent of enterprises reporting they have the necessary staff.

Yelp has boosted its presence in Europe after announcing the acquisition of Restaurant-Kritik, a restaurant review service in Germany. Restaurant-Kritik claims to have over 330,000 reviews of more than 94,000 restaurants across Germany. The US firm has not revealed how much it paid for the Hamburg-based startup, but it says it will begin integrating content from the service into its German site soon. Already, however, a notice at the bottom of restaurant-kritik.de explains that the company is “a project of Yelp Ireland Ltd.”

Last Thursday drug store chain Rite Aid Inc. (RAD)reportedly stopped accepting payments made through the just launched Apple Pay system from Apple (AAPL). On Saturday, CVS Health (CVS) was reported to have followed suit at its CVS pharmacy stores. The issue appears to be a conflict between Apple Pay and a mobile payment system called CurrentC that is being developed by a retailer-owned mobile technology outfit called Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX).