McDonald's is testing near-field communications technology as a way to drive mobile engagements inside one of its restaurants. The NFC strategy, called The Happy Table, is currently in place inside a McDonald's in Singapore. The target audience is children, who can hold a mobile phone over a table to activate a mobile game.

EBay is marrying up the iPhone and iPad experiences of its fashion and motors applications to address how consumers increasingly shop across multiple devices. The app update affects the eBay Fashion and eBay Motors iOS apps and is meant to tap into the specific features of each device while also creating a unified mobile shopping experience. EBay also reports that each app has generated more than one million downloads.

Do guns and mobile commerce mix? The popular mobile payments provider Square Inc. thinks not. In the spring, according to AmmoLand.com, the company revised its terms of service to prohibit its products from being used for firearm sales, ammunition, firearm parts and any other associated materials that the company deems as "designed to cause physical injury."

Japanese carrier NTT Docomo today announced one more acquisition in Europe both to continue building out its operations in the region and beyond vanilla offerings like voice and mobile data: it is acquiring fine trade, an e-commerce and payment solution provider based out of Austria. The price, NTT Docomo tells us, is in the "several tens of millions of Euros," along with a reason for why it cannot be more specific: "We cannot disclose the exact price as it affects the business development," a spokesperson says.

A Carl's Jr. franchise with 40 locations in Oklahoma and Texas credits some recent high redemption rates with SMS coupons to the ability to push out aggressive, local offers. The Carl's Jr. Star Chasers Oklahoma, Inc. franchise consists of 40 locations in Oklahoma and Texas, and the company uses SMS marketing to primarily push out offers to engage consumers at specific store levels. The company works with Tetherball on its mobile marketing efforts.

As more marketers beef up cross-screen campaigns, mobile fingerprinting is gaining some traction as a method to track consumers across different devices. However, challenges with privacy and accuracy are keeping the technology from fully taking off. For marketers with multiple digital assets, fingerprinting is positioned as a way for marketers to track consumers across smartphones, tablets and desktops. The problem though is that the method is not completely effective since the tracking uses a set of anonymous attributes.

When it comes to mobile payments, security is a major issue. Mobile commerce has garnered a significant amount of attention from consumers around the world, but it has also attracted the interests of malicious groups that seek to exploit financial information. Hackers have begun infiltrating the mobile commerce scene, and this has made many consumers concerned for the security of their financial information. PayPal, which has established a prominent place in the mobile payments sector, has begun testing new technology that could make the mobile space more secure.

JUMIA has launched its App in Nigeria, Morocco, Ivory Coast and Kenya. JUMIA's App is available for all Android phones - enforcing m-commerce in Africa. With their new app, JUMIA's selection of 50.000 products is just a few clicks away and makes online shopping even easier and totally flexible. M-commerce is exploding in Africa - the number of users who access the internet via their phones is growing rapidly and leapfrogging the traditional desktop users in Africa.

Armonk, N.Y. - Back-to-school sales may have been stronger than anticipated this year, judging by online sales performance in July and August. According to the IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark, online sales saw substantial gains from July through the third week in August, fueled by double-digit growth in mobile buying. Specific findings for online sales activity in each month include:The month of July saw a 15% increase in online sales, 8% increase in average order value and more than 9% growth in average per order. Early back-to-school bargains helped drive this activity.

Tesco and 7-Eleven are the latest retailers hoping to find success with mobile devices bearing their brand even as others have tried and failed with similar strategies. Retailers expect to be the next Amazon, whose Kindle Fire tablet has gained some traction in the marketplace. However, they may not be taking into account that Amazon is not making much, if any, money with its tablet or that there is a significant amount of work involved in developing and maintaining a mobile strategy.