Indonesian financial institution PermataBank has joined forces with BlackBerry and mobile money specialist Monitise to launch BBM Money.

This pilot scheme will let customers set up a mobile money account from their BlackBerry smartphone and make real-time payments to any BBM contacts who have also signed up to the service.

Visa and Samsung have announced a partnership that combines Visa’s expertise in payments with Samsung’s mobile technology.

It’ll enable financial institutions to download payment account information to NFC-enabled Samsung devices via the Visa Mobile Provisioning Service.

eBay-owned online payment service PayPal is introducing a new Chip & PIN device for UK retailers. It’s called PayPal Here - the same name as the company’s plug-in reader for swipe cards in the USA - and is designed to work in conjunction with a smartphone app.

The device is being made available to select UK businesses in the next few months before a full UK launch this summer.

Mark Bridge writes:

Mobile networks aren’t what they used to be. As last week’s interview with Vince Russell of The Cloud demonstrated, more and more customers are relying on WiFi to augment their mobile data service.

Truphone is now planning to do exactly the same with voice calls and text messages by linking its mobile network with WiFi for even wider coverage.

Amazon.com is launching its own virtual currency in May, although at the moment it’s only being offered to Kindle Fire owners in the USA. It’ll be possible to use the ‘Amazon Coins’ currency for buying applications, games, and in-app items on Kindle Fire tablets.

Although full details haven’t been announced, Amazon says it will be giving customers millions of dollars’ worth of Amazon Coins to use in the Amazon Appstore.