EveryScape, which provides “eye-level” images of major towns and cities around the world, has raised $6 million in a third round of funding. The company charges local businesses in order to build 3D, photo-realistic panoramas of their physical locations which are then featured on EveryScape.com and can also be embedded…

VeriFone, which makes point-of-sale equipment, like PIN pads, says it has invested $5 million in Chinese mobile payments firm Trunkbow, as part of the $22.5 million Trunkbow raised via a reverse merger. The investments puts a $65 million valuation on Trunkbow, according to a statement. Last year, Trunkbow partnered with…

Paris-based Hi-media, a publicly held company that operates an ad network, a publishing business and a payments platform around the world, has opened a San Francisco office to expand its micropayments business to the U.S. Release. The office will be headed by Pooj Preena, Hi-media USA CEO, who previously helped…

San Francisco-based Boku has raised a sizable round of funding totaling $25 million to build a mobile-payments company that they believe can one day compete against financial institutions, like Mastercard, Visa, and even online providers, like Paypal. The year-old company has partnered with wireless carriers around the world to let…

The app market really heated up this year and shows no sign of stopping anytime soon, a report from Gartner says. But the revenue is going to come mostly from consumers, not advertising for at least some time. The consultant’s report expects to see consumers spend $6.2 billion in 2010…

Donations by text message have now exceeded $22 million to the Red Cross alone for the Haiti earthquake relief effort. Update: Tallies are being kept by two primary organizations, both Denver-based mGive and Bellevue, Wash.-based Mobile Giving Foundation, which offer competing services to various non-profits. Together, they are helping more…

Remove the barriers to giving, and people will give. That seems to be the lesson many charities are learning in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday. Within 36 hours, mobile donations to relief efforts for Haiti have topped $7 million, according to the Mobile Giving Foundation. The…

Donations are pouring into the Red Cross by text message to support the victims of the Haiti earthquake. The campaign, which lets you donate $10 using your cellphone bill, is spreading quickly on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Within hours of operation, the program had raised $800,000 $750,000, and…

Mobile and social entertainment company Digital Chocolate has launched its newest game, MMA Pro Fighter, on Facebook—and it’s teaming up with Offerpal Media to monetize it. The game lets players create and train their own mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters; players use virtual goods and abilities (like extra stamina) to…

Another day, another branded app store enters the market ... This time it’s Motorola (NYSE: MOT), though the news has leaked before the company expected it to. No details on when the tentatively-branded SHOP4APPS Android store will go live, but it will be accessible via a handset’s browser, a mobile…

T-Mobile is rolling out carrier-based billing for the Android Market, as promised. Customers are getting the option in waves, and all users will be upgraded by Dec. 30., though, there’s no notification process. Upgraded users will just see the “Bill my T-Mobile account” option (pictured) when they try to make…

Some very positive news for Motorola (NYSE: MOT) as we head into the weekend ... Online retailer eXpansys says that the Milestone—the U.K.-version of the Droid—sold out in just three hours. eXpansys is the exclusive seller of the handset; the company said it had received well over 1,000 pre-orders for…

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey pulled back the curtain on his new startup today called Square, a mobile payments company. Square allows anybody with a cell phone or laptop that has a headphone jack to accept credit card payments using a small plug-in dongle, rather than having to purchase costly credit-card…

More consumers used their mobile phone to make purchases and compare prices on Black Friday than ever before, according to data reviewed by Dow Jones. Mostly, the data was compiled from eBay’s PayPal and TheFind.com, a product search engine. PayPal said mobile payments surge nearly 650 percent, compared to last…

If Playfish can sell for $275 million and Zynga can attract big funding on reports of bigger revenue, there’s clearly life in the virtual goods game. So six Liverpool developers are hoping to emulate the success that pair has had in getting people to pay for things that don’t exist…

Mobile commerce app developer ROAM Data has raised $6.5 million in a second round of funding, per an SEC filing. The new round was led by Ingenico Ventures, the new VC arm of global payment solutions company Ingenico SAS; former Hypercom CEO George Wallner also participated.

Mobile payments provider Boku is gaining traction, seemingly evolving into the chosen platform for social and casual gaming companies that want to make it easier for their users to pay for virtual goods and downloads on-the-go. The company—which officially launched its service in June—already counted big publishers like Playfish and…

In the past year, we’ve seen a palpable shift from newspaper and magazine publishers with regard to paid content—while they still don’t know how to make paid content work, they know they want to try. A recent report from the American Press Institute underscores this trend: The API reports that…

Austin-based Digby, which provides mobile tools to retailers, said today it has acquired Movaya Wireless. Seattle-based Movaya builds apps for the iPhone, Android and other platforms to help sell digital goods. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Release. Digby said that as part of the transaction, Movaya’s Asian operations…