Mark Bridge writes:

It's not often that a news story about the Apple iPhone prompts me to remember a bible verse... but this week was an exception.

The story was in The Washington Post and it was headlined 'Apple's iPhone does well without being the best'. “Very true,” I thought, as I remembered something similar I'd written last summer.

Texas-based DeviceFidelity has created a protective case that adds the capability for NFC payments to the Apple iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. It's based on DeviceFidelity’s In2Pay microSD card, which slots into the case. This, in turn, fits on the iPhone and can communicate with a payment application. The In2Pay card uses Visa’s contactless payment technology, Visa payWave; trials are scheduled to start during the second quarter of 2010.

Orange is the latest UK network to cut its charges for charities that collect donations by text message, following similar action by O2, Vodafone and WIN plc.

The company says it'll now pass on 90% of all SMS donations between 15p and £10 to any registered charities. It gives 100% of all text donations to its own charity partners including Comic Relief, Sports Relief, Children in Need and the Royal British Legion’s Poppy Appeal.

Telecoms research company Berg Insight expects the number of mobile banking users to grow from 55 million people last year to reach 894 million users in 2015. That's a compound annual growth rate of 59.2%. Asia-Pacific is expected to account for more than half of the total user base, with 115 million users in Europe anticipated by 2015.

Mobile payment service ImpulsePay has launched an age verification service for online content, enabling content owners to sell products and services to users aged over 18. Unlike other services that require a credit card to confirm the user's age, ImpulsePay checks the user's mobile phone account with their mobile operator to make sure they're old enough to buy the content.