Welcome once again to our round up of the best features and stories you might have missed over the past week. 

Just about everyone, from banks to retailers, operators to manufacturers, seems to be eyeing up a piece of the mobile payments pie at the moment. This week, Kirsty Styles posed the vital question – who will be first to win over the consumer? – to mobile money specialists Michael Nuciforo and Roy Vella, and got back some interesting answers.

Meanwhile, I spoke to someone with an answer of his own – Weve marketing director Tony Moretta. Unsurprisingly, he believes that it will be operators, through partnerships with selected members of each other party. But with the Weve wallet not due until the second half of next year, will it come too late?

Elsewhere, Yahoo continued its spending spree, with acquisitions of video app Qwiki, fantasy sports platform Bignoggins, and more. Could we be in for one of the greatest comebacks the digital world has ever seen? Watch this space.

And amidst all the recent controversy surrounding digital privacy and security, two of todays stories have given smartphone owners another reason to worry about their personal information. First, there was news of a Master Key vulnerability in Android that can be used to access pretty much any part of a device without detection, by hacking apps without breaking their cryptographic signature.

Then came word that Samsungs tie-in app for Jay-Zs highly-anticipated Magna Carta Holy Grail was seeking permissions for a range of functions it had no obvious need for. Whether the rapper will be able to simply brush this dirt off his shoulder remains to be seen.

Have a good weekend, enjoy the sun, and well see you again on Monday.

Alex Spencer

Online Editor