Report: Wal-Mart, Other Retailers Leap into Payments Battle

Originally published on Fox Business. Target (TGT: 56.43, -0.33, -0.58%), Wal-Mart (WMT: 58.88, +0.06, +0.10%) and a slew of other retailers have reportedly joined the emerging battle over turning smartphones into virtual wallets. According to The Wall Street Journal, the two giant discount retailers along with about two dozen unnamed retailers are teaming up to develop a mobile-payments system in an effort to capture at least a piece of a market expected to surpass $600 billion by 2016. The collaboration would throw retailers into competition against Google (GOOG: 621.55, -0.85, -0.14%), credit-card networks like MasterCard (MA: 414.26, -6.17, -1.47%), financial giants such as JPMorgan Chase (JPM: 40.75, +0.38, +0.94%) and mobile providers including AT&T (T: 30.94, +0.30, +1.00%). Continue reading this article here.