Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., China's leading e-commerce company, has led a $50 million funding round in mobile app search engine Quixey. It's the latest in a series of Alibaba investments in emerging technology companies. Quixey, a 4-year-old company based in Mountain View in California's Silicon Valley, enables consumers to search for mobile apps by function as well as name. Being able to find an app without knowing its name is Quixey's big advantage, says Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group.

Holiday purchases made by the top ten percent of households are expected to rise eight percent to $20.7 billion, while the top one percent of households intends to spend an average of $3,414, a dip of 3.3 percent from the year-ago period, according to a new study by American Express Publishing and Harrison Group. The 2013 Holiday Forecast Study determined that the spike in affluent consumer spending is driven by households with $150,000 in discretionary income and up to $450,000 in household income. Twenty-three percent of affluent consumers plan to do more online shopping this year, and 45 percent of …

PayPal is teaming up with a handful of retailers including Levi's, Aropostale and Maurice's with a time-sensitive offer for free shipping, highlighting the importance of incentivizing consumers with mobile and Web offers to beat showrooming this holiday season. PayPal is offering consumers who shop on retailers' mobile sites, applications and Web sites free two-day shipping through Nov. 1. In addition to educating consumers about alternative payment types, the marketing move will also help PayPal form closer relationships with retailers as the company makes a

The Seychelles Government has agreed for Airtel Mobile Commerce (Seychelles) Limited, to engage in a pilot programme to test the practical and technical aspects of mobile payment services in the country. The Central Bank of Seychelles (CBS) and Department of Information Communications Technology (DICT) will have oversight of the payment system and technological aspects, respectively. On Friday 27th September, 2013, the Government represented by the Ministry of Finance, Trade and Investment, the CBS, and DICT signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Airtel to bring the M-commerce platform, Airtel Money, to Seychelles. Once the pre-requisites are met CBS will issue …

Price comparison sites are slowly heating up in Southeast Asia. So Rocket Internet's PricePanda has upped its game a notch by launching a mobile app for Android users today. PricePanda made its presence in Southeast Asia known last year by launching its websites in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Following this, it now seems to realize the potential of m-commerce in the region. The PricePanda team cites the recent Nielsen report where it shows that markets such as Singapore and Malaysia now have higher mobile penetration compared to Western countries. With the mobile app, users can choose which country …

While carriers in the west fight for a significant role in the mobile commerce value chain, it's a very different story in Africa, where economic growth and the sizeable base of 'unbanked' users are creating a boom in handset-based payments. Vodafone has been a pioneer with its M-Pesa, which is gradually expanding from its initial territory in Kenya to other parts of Africa and to India. Now Bharti Airtel, India's own leading cellco, and a key Vodafone rival in emerging economies, has partnered with pan-African banking group Ecobank to offer mobile money services across nine countries.

While 22.2 percent of men have made a purchase on their smartphone compared to 18.2 percent of women, these roles could soon change as women become more comfortable with mobile, according to a report from SeeWhy. The report found that 57 percent of women had made an online purchase in the last year, while only 52 percent of men had done so. One of the analysts involved with the report states that women may be more hesitant to adopt mobile commerce, but as they become more comfortable with the technology, they will overpass men.

American Express has announced a partnership with Braintree as the payment platform looks to bring its one-touch m-commerce system, Venmo Touch, to UK merchants. American Express will support the UK launch of Venmo Touch as Braintree's exclusive marketing partner with targeted Cardmember communications including newsletters, social media and digital banner ads. "Venmo Touch makes it easier than ever for consumers to make purchases on a mobile device and solves one of the biggest barriers companies face selling goods and services on mobile-a simple, one touch checkout experience," explained Braintree CEO Bill Ready.

Mobile commerce Luddites are becoming harder to find among retailers, as more merchants focus on making it easy for consumers to shop via their smartphones and tablets. Internet Retailer's latest survey on mobile commerce finds that 78.8% of responding retailers view mobile commerce as very important. That's a significant increase from 58.8% who said so last year. The survey also shows that mobile commerce sales are rising and retailers are spending more money to build their mobile commerce sites and apps. Thirty-eight web-only retailers, 17 retail chains, seven consumer brand manufacturers and four catalog/call center companies responded to the online …

Mobile commerce services provider Cardfree has been selected by Sonic Drive-In as its mobile commerce platform. The Sonic chain of drive-in restaurants currently has over 3,500 drive-ins serving approximately 3 million US customers every day. Cardfree is a white-label platform, which allows merchants and vendors to provide mGifts messaging, personalized promotions, mobile payments, loyalty, order-ahead and social media engagement, as well as reporting and analytics. Cardfree also allows merchants to create digital payment cards (prepaid) that are compatible with point-of-sale systems. The Sonic mobile service will be piloted later this year with expected system-wide deployment in 2014.