Mobile and internet-based transactions have for the first time surpassed card payments after registering a 28,3% growth in the month of May as more account holders turn to the convenience of mobile banking. According to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ)'s May 2013 monthly economic review, the value of mobile and internet-based transactions rose from US$283,6 million in April to US$364 million in May 2013, while the total value of card-based transactions rose by 1,3% from US$328,2 million in April to US$332,6 million in May 2013.

Jackthreads, the flash-sale curator of men's apparel, is booming on this year's m-commerce front. Having taken the mobile world by storm in the five years since its inception, the Columbus, Ohio-based company recently shared its 2013 projections: 90 percent of mobile sales on iOS and Android apps, 68 percent of all traffic from mobile units, 50 percent of all sales from mobile units. Overall, Jackthreads predicts a growth of 357 percent during 2013 with a total gross of $37 million.

Two hundred and sixty-five million mobile devices were sold in the first quarter of this year, a 54 percent year-over-year increase, according to IDC Worldwide. More than one in every two U.S. consumers now owns a smartphone, per Pew Research Center, and four out of five of them use it for shopping, claims comScore. Thirty-nine percent of last year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday shoppers learned of deals through email marketing, per Bizrate Insights, and 41 percent of those emails were opened on mobile devices, Knotice said.

Mobile commerce continues to rake in greater amounts of revenue for retailers. Marketers looking to grab a bigger piece of mobile should split up their efforts to target men and women differently because of their contrasting shopping behavior. The talk about mobile commerce for retailers is shifting away from simply having a presence towards tailoring the shopping experience to meet the needs of specific groups of consumers. One of the easiest ways for retailers to do this is to break down efforts by gender to get a better understanding of how consumers use their mobile devices as a part of …

China e-commerce giant Alibaba Group has ventured into the Internet TV space with the unveiling of its smart TV operating system (OS) and set-top box. Alibaba enters the smart TV business with its operating system. This is part of plans to form the nucleus of a TV-centric ecosystem allowing Chinese consumers to access digital content, share content with mobile phones and other devices, as well as shop and pay bills via their TVs, according to Alibaba's official blog on Tuesday.

Consumers are less wary about using their mobile phones to make travel bookings, reveals a survey by Google and IPSOS. With close to 165 million mobile internet users set to go online by March next year, m-commerce is expected to constitute more than 25 per cent of the e-commerce market share, which was estimated to be around $14 billion last year.

The growing love affair smartphone-toting Kiwis have with mobile banking is starting to push the desktop PC into second place. ASB is the first bank to reach a "tipping point" where more than half of all customers' online sessions are now taking place on mobile devices. Head of digital experience and commerce Michael Ramsay said the behavioural shift was one of the biggest and fastest the bank had observed in its 160-year history.

A new service which opens the M-Pesa system to Bitcoin currency has energized Kenya's mobile commerce sector. July has marked the launch of Kipochi - Swahili for wallet - a free service developed by veteran digital programmer Pelle Braendgaard. The service allows users to purchase bitcoins through M-Pesa - Kenya's leading mobile-payments service at 44-million strong. Launched back in 2007 through a partnership between Safaricom and Vodafone, M-Pesa allows users to send payments via mobile phones to merchants and fellow users.

For Eric and Susan Koger, the husband-and-wife duo who founded online shopping site ModCloth Inc. as high school sweethearts, a division of labor has always been clear: he's tech and she's fashion. That balance helped ModCloth stand out in a sea of e-commerce rivals and expand sales to "well over" $100 million last year, according to Chief Executive Officer Eric Koger, 29. It also informed a push into wireless devices, which now account for nearly half of visits to its store, he said.

ModCloth, the indie fashion site best known for its vintage-inspired dresses, is today offering the first look into its revenue situation since 2009. The e-commerce startup, which is backed by roughly $48 million in outside funding, says it did over $100 million in revenue last year, and is now growing faster than 40 percent year-over-year. That's up from the $15 million it had previously reported in 2009. To compare that figure with other well-known e-commerce industry players: Fab.com did $120 million in revenue last year, and is now valued at $1 billion; Beyond the Rack estimated around $200 million for …