Microsoft’s plan for Windows Phone 8—which appears to be moving in step with its overall Windows 8 launch strategy—has been leaked, and the company is planning to take some big steps forward in terms of overall performance, mobile payments, and voice calling.

paidContent understands Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is set to make some big first-anniversary upgrades to its OnePass paid content system in the next few weeks, designed to increase slow take-up among publishers.

It’s an election year, which means politicians are frantically trying to raise money for their campaigns. President Obama’s re-election campaign has decided to add Square’s mobile payments technology to its arsenal and is deploying the company’s credit-card readers to its staff.

Telegraph.co.uk reports the UK’s main commercial free-to-air TV broadcaster has delayed a programme under which it wants to charge online viewers for some content. But that’s not quite the case.

Mecom is to introduce digital pay models across its top newspaper titles, slash costs by €70m and potentially close or sell 65 free titles, following a wide-ranging strategic review by new chief executive Tom Toumazis.

Losing your phone is never fun. But losing your wallet is much worse, and that’s one argument where those trying to roll the mobile-payments boulder up the mountain might find some help.

News Of The World’s closure deprived News International of data on which it could have based a decision to introduce digital fees at the UK’s most popular newspaper.

The UK’s largest regional newspaper title, the Wolverhampton-based Express & Star, is ending the premium online payment tier it introduced in April 2011, whilst introducing updated paid tablet and smartphone editions.

News International’s The Times may shed its social media invisibility cloak by letting subscribers gift paywalled articles to friends.

The consumer draw of free apps over paid apps has been well-documented, and so has the rise of in-app payments as a route to making money from those free apps. New research out today predicts that in-app purchases will, in fact, become the most dominant way that app developers will…

(This version corrects an error in the percentage for the price increase of the FT) Every newspaper, magazine or website is working on a paywall of sorts and closely monitoring what everyone else is doing. In almost every news company, execs are morosely watching advertising projections and finding numbers that…

Eight big Slovenian publishers are about to start charging for parts of their online content all at the same time, using a single payment kiosk that was pioneered in Slovakia and could soon be expanding elsewhere.

Italians are twice as likely to pay for digital content as consumers in some other major nations.

A year ago, Forrester stated that 2011 would—finally—be the year that Near Field Communications (NFC) began to matter. We predicted that dozens of millions of NFC devices would ship and that the market would start moving away from being niche, although it would still be years away from becoming mainstream.…

TinyPass, a startup that aims to streamline the process of charging for content online by using existing platforms like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and PayPal, has signed its first four publishers: DJ Booth, Hedge Tracker, Seattleite and Accent Pro.

Chicago’s second-largest daily newspaper, the Sun-Times, and its 39 affiliated suburban newspapers will all start charging for online content. Starting tomorrow, users, including print subscribers, will have to pay to read more than 20 articles per month. The exception: movie critic Roger Ebert’s website, blog and reviews remain free.

For years, Google’s pitch for the Nexus class of Android phones has been that they offer the “pure Google” experience, a version of its software uncluttered by interference from carriers and handset makers. But that won’t be the case for the Galaxy Nexus, as Verizon has decided to block Google…

“We’ve done qualitative research in the UK that did tend to indicate users of Mail Online would pay something for certain aspects of the content,” DMGT CEO Martin Morgan told City analysts.

We’ve observed a lot of western companies looking to cash in on the explosive growth of China’s mobile population by taking their products into the country. Now here’s an example of a Chinese giant looking shop its own mobile services abroad: the internet portal Tencent is now distributing its QQ…