David Mangini | Source | General Manager at Giori Digital SA

Late last month, I ordered the beverage at Sightglass Coffee in SoMa, grabbed it from the counter and walked out without cracking my wallet. "What we wanted to focus on was removing the mechanics of the transaction and building the relationship between the merchant and customer," said Megan Quinn, director of products at Square, which occupies space at the Chronicle building at Fifth and Mission streets. Google, Visa, MasterCard, VeriFone, eBay's PayPal division and a joint venture among AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile are attacking the problem in various ways. In most cases, those businesses are going a different direction than Square, employing near field communications (NFC) technology that allows people to tap their phone near a terminal to make a payment. Done right, mobile payments can accelerate the monetary exchange, while streamlining the issuance, acceptance and storage of receipts, coupons and loyalty cards. Google's Wallet payment app works with this system, and industry rumors...