Time to take a quick look back at the year to see what interested you in the world of mobile commerce. Info about mobile coupons were at the top of the list, followed by a high degree of interest in the actual activity of shopping.

While various forms of mobile payments continue to launch and evolve around the world, there's still no clear single solution for the masses. Now along comes one that can work at any point if sale terminal that takes credit cards.

Mobile payments are gradually taking to the air. Well, at least they're on the way to being used to get passengers in the air. Almost a third of airlines say they expect to accept mobile payments within the next two years.

Christmas was yet another busy day for mobile commerce. It also was a busy day for the computers at IBM, as its Digital Analytics Benchmark continued to track and compare shopping activity from this year to last.

Mobile payments may not yet be mainstream in the U.S. but the potential of cross-border commerce may become a big driver. For a view of the landscape of future mobile payments, I caught up with the Chief Architect of Alipay International, who has some interesting predictions on where commerce and payments are headed next year.

The Isis mobile payment system, rolling out nationwide, looks like it may still have a few hurdles to get over. The issues may be less technical and involve implementation and training.

Another set of predictions for the future is out and this one looks five years down the road and sees mobile playing an integral role in shopping. One of the key forecasts in this report is that buying local will beat online. This according to the eighth annual "IBM 5 in 5" report, comprising a list of innovations that have the potential to change how people work, live and interact during the next five years.

While many consider point of sale a key if not the key area of mobile payments, there are other aspects of payments that seem to growing. There is, of course, is peer-to-peer mobile payments, when someone wants to exchange cash with someone else, which can be done by various apps like Venmo.

Numerous studies show that consumers shop on their smartphones and tablets but buy in stores. It's also no secret that many consumers also use their phones in stores as they shop and a recent survey gives some indication of the range of mobile activities going on in stores.

Throughout the mobile path to purchase, there are multiple times and ways that the consumer purchase decision can be influenced. As I've written about here in the past, there are six stages in the mobile purchase path, one of which is the actual transaction, where money changes hands.