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"We're always looking to get as close to one touch donations as we can," Romney Campaign's Digital Director Zac Moffat told the LATimes.

Politico reports that both the Romney and Obama campaigns have started using Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey's "magical" dongle, Square. Of course, you can't pay by saying your name as you now can at select merchants, but Square still makes campaign donations much faster and easier. Staff, field organizers and campaign volunteers hook up Square to their mobile phones and accept campaign donations on the spot.

Mobile payment has become a mainstream tech topic in the last couple of years, mirroring the rise of smartphones and application stores. E-commerce is becoming m-commerce. The focus point of the buzz has been the evolution of near-field communications as related to smartphones. The thing is, nobody in the payments industry expects NFC to be a player in mobile payments for years, if ever. In that case, what does the mobile payments ecosystem look like in the short term?

The current mobile payments market centers around several cores: direct carrier billing, mobile wallets, online and offline sales, mobile credit card readers and application stores. During meetings with various mobile payments experts and executives at CTIA last week, the most uttered phrase was: "This is not something I would use to buy a fridge." Where are mobile payments going?

Today Square updated its Card Case digital wallet app. If you leave Square's "auto open" tabs feature on and walk to your favorite merchant, you can place your order just by saying your name. Merchants who have signed up for Square will be able to see users who are within 100 meters of a location. Just say "put it on [insert name here]," and the payment will be completed. Then you'll receive a push notification on your phone with the charge amount.

Mobile credit card transaction platform Square is coming to the nation's largest retailer. Square has struck a deal with Wal-Mart that will bring the dongle into retail stores across the country. The move is huge for Square but seems antithetical to align to its core business model, which is to bring mobile credit card readers to the masses.

Bloomberg Business Week first reported the story. Outside of saying that Square will now be located in 9,000 retail stores nationwide, Bloomberg does not say exactly what the use case inside of Wal-Mart stores will be. There are a variety of possibilities.

Mobile payments has become a mainstream tech topic in the last couple of years, mirroring the rise of smartphones and application stores. E-commerce is becoming m-commerce. The focus point of the buzz has been the evolution of near-field communications as related to smartphones. The thing is, nobody in the payments industry expects NFC to be a player in mobile payments for years, if ever. In that case, what does the mobile payments ecosystem look like in the short term?

The current mobile payments market centers around several cores: direct carrier billing, mobile wallets, online and offline sales, mobile credit card readers and application stores. During meetings with various mobile payments experts and executives at CTIA last week, the most uttered phrase was: "This is not something I would use to buy a fridge." Where are mobile payments going?

Financial management system Intuit had an event in Mountain View this evening to show off its next generation of mobile payment solutions. From its dongle-based Square competitor, GoPayment, to the ability to deposit a check by taking a picture of it with your smartphone, Intuit looks to align itself with the rest of the mobile payments industry and put itself on track to eclipse the competition.

Of note, Intuit is creating a pre-paid card designed to let merchants deposit money they collect with the GoPayment dongle straight to debit account. Intuit can store the funds itself or it can be transferred to a regular bank. Yet, with Google Wallet and near-field communications around the corner, do dongles even stand a chance?

Verizon Wireless and financial management company Intuit announced today a partnership that will bring Intuit's mobile card reader to 2,300 Verizon retails stores across the country. The partnership is yet another big move in the mobile card reader industry that has been popularized by Square and includes Verifone, Erply and PayAnywhere among others.

Intuit operates QuickBooks, a system used by merchants to manage finances. As such, GoPayment fits well in Intuit's product line. Verizon will be able to put the Go Payment in front of millions of people looking for mobile payment options. It is a win for both companies and a strike to Square, which is putting up a big fight against the large financial companies that are rapidly entering mobile payment industry.

Mobile payment provider Square, also known as Jack Dorsey's other company, has just updated its universal iOS app to version 2.1, adding some small but key improvements.

The app, which allows anyone with an iOS or Android device to process credit card payments, has accelerated transactions, both by enhancing performance and reducing the number of screens in the process. It no longer requires a signature on purchases under $25.00, in the interest of time and effort. The tipping interface has improved, and $0.00 transactions are now supported, which will make the experience more merchant-friendly while allowing for more accurate receipts.

Few topics have garnered as much hype among tech enthusiasts this year as mobile payments. And while the prospect of waving our phones to pay for everything from subway rides to groceries is exciting to some, do we have any reason to believe consumers are on board with the idea?

Banks, credit card companies, mobile carriers and tech companies big and small are all clamoring to position themselves to benefit in a cashless, mobile future, but some recent reports suggest that consumers are going to need a little more time.

According to news coming out of the Black Hat security conference this week, researchers have figured out a way to use the Square mobile payments system to access stolen credit card data. The ingenious thing about the hack demonstrated is that criminals would not even need to have the original stolen card present in order to use Square for fraud. Instead, they can convert magnetic stripe data into an audio file, use a stereo cable to feed it into the Square device (a small dongle that plugs into your smartphone's headphone jack), and - ta-da! - the illegal transaction completes.

This hack turns the Square reader, a dongle meant to support swiped transactions, into one that can be used for electronic-only transactions, reports CNET. Creative? Yes. A real-world concern? We're not so sure.

However, a second hack, which turns the dongle into a card skimmer is of more concern. And it begs the question: where is the hardware encryption Square promised us earlier?