These are times of wondrous investment and innovation in the mobile payments industry. 

We're in the initial stages of an all-out war for the future of consumer payments, one that's engulfing top Internet players, telcos, card companies, banks and plenty of start-ups. This may rank as one of the most profound new financial services quantum leaps ever.

To be sure, there will be casualties, and now comes word that Google will fold its original Checkout service into its Google Wallet project, for which it has high hopes. Though its technology model was different, Checkout was initially conceived as a competitor to PayPal. But it never really managed to put a dent in the online payments leader. But the two firms will live to fight another war, with even higher stakes.

PayPal, to the surprise of many, has launched plans to extend its payments system to encompass offline transactions, bringing it into the fray with Google, ISIS, the card companies and all the others. In some ways, PayPal is taking on the entire NFC movement. Bank Technology News notes the views of some experts that the installed base of Checkout, though small compared with PayPal, could nevertheless give Google Wallet an early boost, supplying it with a decent size customer list.

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