According to the latest industry estimates, mobile payment transactions are projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2017. Playing a huge role in this development will be mobile POS systems that involve today's top tablets and smartphones.As of early 2013, smartphones have reached fifty percent market penetration with eighty percent expected well before the close of this decade. As a result of rapid smartphone adoption, consumers are getting comfortable with mobile payments and so are business owners and entrepreneurs.

Gilt Groupe is kicking off its Summer Must Haves mobile sales series and letting consumers shop exclusive looks and fashion items via its mcommerce applications. The series will begin on June 22. Over the past few years, Gilt has been running mobile-only deals to educate consumers to use its mobile apps.

SingTel is amongst the players whose focus on future growth engines is showing results. The company's business is aligned around areas such as e-commerce, m-commerce, digital entertainment, digital gaming and social communications amongst others. According to Smith, the company's focus is driven by two factors - the first is where are the real or latent needs from customers, for example finding a place to have dinner. And the second is about identifying opportunities to commercialise. "Whilst we are interested, like all digital companies, in driving scale through active users, there is nothing quite like making money," Smith says, in a …

The uptake for shopping on mobile devices in the UK appears to be gathering pace, with m-commerce taking 15 per cent of retail e-commerce sales, according to new data from eMarketer. The digital marketing, media and commerce specialist estimates that digital sales (excluding travel) will represent 11.5 per cent of the UK's total retail sales this year, up from 10.2 per cent in 2012.

Sephora is seeing more consumers turn to their mobile devices and tablets to comparison shop, read reviews and, ultimately, buy their favorite beauty products. As a result, the retailer has seen a 150 percent growth in mobile shopping. This is of course thanks in large part to the company's ongoing efforts to streamline its mobile shopping experiences.

Lazada, the Southeast Asian online retail company founded by Germany's Rocket Internet Gmbh, has secured another $100 million from investors in its bid to lift the region from its status as an e-commerce backwater. While online shopping is big in Europe, the United States and even in China, where it is likely to account for 6% of all retail business this year, Southeast Asians still prefer to do 99% of their shopping offline, the company estimates.

Two years after eBay Inc. acquired e-commerce technology and services provider GSI Commerce Inc., eBay has renamed it eBay Enterprise. That positions GSI as one of eBay's three main business units, alongside eBay Marketplaces and online payments provider PayPal. the company said that eBay Enterprise will work with eBay technology to expand its offerings in local and mobile commerce, and "is committed to leveraging data in ways that enable our retail and brand partners to deliver unparalleled loyalty-driven consumer experiences."

Mobile payments now account for more than 10 percent of all transactions across Starbucks stores nationwide, the coffeehouse chain said. The Starbucks Card Mobile App connects iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices to prepaid Starbucks Card accounts to enable barcode-based checkouts. Mobile payments represent "a very sticky transaction by virtue of the fact that people have preloaded their money that we hold for them in anticipation of that coming transaction," Troy Alstead, Starbucks' chief financial officer and chief accounting officer, revealed.

Mobile payments are making strong progress around the world, especially as major organizations become more involved in this emerging sector. In Taiwan, the country's third-largest telecommunications company has ambitious plans for mobile payments. Far EasTone Telecommunications has announced the launch of a new mobile payments pilot project that seeks to leverage the capabilities of NFC technology to enable consumers to purchase goods and services from their mobile devices. The company has set the launch for the project during the second half of this year.

Storage retailer The Container Store Inc. has redesigned its mobile commerce site to provide more desktop-like shopping functionality for its growing base of smartphone shoppers, says online marketing director Jessica Coogan. The new features include visual navigation, ratings and reviews, and pop-up overlays that allow customers to add items to the cart or post to social networks without going to another page, she says.