Finsphere Corporation, a US-based business that uses mobile phones to confirm an individual’s identity, has received $11.3 million from a group of investors.

The investment round was led by Vodafone Ventures, the venture capital arm of Vodafone Group. Tobin Ireland, Group Director of Commercial Development at Vodafone, will join the Finsphere board of directors.

The Carphone Warehouse Group plc has published an interim management statement for the third quarter of its current financial year.

It says its business in Europe performed strongly on post-pay (‘pay monthly’ deals) and non-cellular products, although a weakness in the lower-value prepay market resulted in like-for-like revenue being down by 4.7% when compared with the previous year. Overall, figures for the full year are expected to be in line with previous guidance.

We’ve previously reported on the launch of Square in the USA and iZettle in Sweden. Now eCommerce platform Powa has announced mPowa, a combination of plug-in card reader and mobile app.

It means that almost anyone in the UK with a compatible smartphone will be able to take credit card and debit card payments, either when visiting customers or in their own premises.

Telefónica says it’s signed a strategic partnership with cloud services company Joyent and is also making a strategic equity investment in the business.

It says Joyent’s technology expertise will help enhance cloud-based services for Telefonica’s new Digital unit.

Ericsson and ZTE have resolved patent licensing issues that had seen both parties taking legal action against each other.

In April 2011, Ericsson filed lawsuits in Germany, UK and Italy against ZTE for infringing on some of its GSM and 3G/UMTS technology patents. ZTE responded with its own patent claim.