Thirty-three-year-old Vivid Tjipura, a qualified state prosecutor, has scooped a R100 000 prize for a concept of using mobile airtime as an emergency form of payment for taxi fare. The service, called Airtaxi, advances airtime to minibus taxi commuters if they run out. Cape Town-based software development company Byte Orbit runs the Startup Knight competition for tech startups, currently in its second year. The "concept phase" category was introduced this year, along with the R100 000 cash prize. Airtaxi was selected as the winner after entries were narrowed down to eight finalists.

HSN is getting a leg-up on Black Friday this holiday season by offering consumers mobile-only offers for shopping on the company's site and applications. The multichannel retailer is unveiling the mobile pre-Black-Friday offers on the two Fridays leading up to the big holiday shopping day. Last week, HSN leveraged push notifications and an SMS blast to its database of 900,000 subscribers to get the word out about the company's first mobile-only offer.

The first report of a three-country African Growth Market Study on mobile content and commerce by MEF, shows that Kenyan industry leaders are optimistic about mobile content and commerce revenue growth. A third of respondents saw mobile end-user revenues rise more than they expected last year. Perhaps unsurprisingly in a market with highly developed mobile money and m-banking offerings, mobile money was found to be the main source of end-user revenue at 53% followed by social networks (37%) and mobile commerce (30%).

ITProPortal first met Steffan Aquarone at the Open Innovations forum in Moscow this year, where he headed up a discussion on the future of mobile commerce. As a technology entrepreneur, Aquarone co-founded mobile money platform Droplet, an app that allows customers to load money onto their phone and send payments for free. So he seemed like the perfect person to catch up with again as we draw closer to the final month of 2013, to talk about where the mobile payments industry is heading.

Mobile identity is becoming more important to businesses, especially as more consumers around the world begin to rely on smartphones, tablets, and other devices in their daily lives. Market research firm ResearchMOZ has released a new report concerning the growing importance of mobile identity and how businesses are beginning to invest more heavily in biometrics and other such technologies. The report cites the growth of mobile interactions and mobile commerce as the influence behind higher investments in mobile identity.

W.W. Grainger Inc.will complete a migration, several months in the making, of the majority its customers to a new e-commerce platform, the B2B retailer of maintenance, repair and other products exclusively tells Internet Retailer. With updated navigation and order management tools, the platform, designed for Grainger's corporate clients, allows up to 1,500 staffers to log into a single business account and place, approve or track orders via the web or with one of Grainger's mobile commerce sites or apps, the merchant says. Helping to foster the platform's utility across devices, Grainger tomorrow also will unveil a new iPad app.

The retail industry has been undergoing something of a revolution in recent years, sparked by the increasingly important role technology is playing in the lives of people around the world. Mobile technology, in particular, has come to play an important role in society and as more people rely on their mobile devices in their everyday lives, retailers are beginning to feel the pressure to accommodate the needs of these people more adequately. For most retailers, this means embracing mobile commerce and new marketing techniques that are specifically focused on mobile consumers.

Canadian e-commerce and m-commerce services provider AnywhereCommerce has signed a partnership agreement with Prosa, a merchant services provider serving Mexico and other markets throughout the region. Under the terms of the agreement, AnywhereCommerce will provide a mobile payment platform, including acceptance devices, software applications, and gateway services, to support Prosa's deployment of mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) services.Prosa will deploy AnywhereCommerce's 'aCommerce Gateway' for accepting credit, debit, cash, and gift card payments, as well as the company's payment accepting software application, and its line of mPOS devices, including the Walker model. Walker is EMVCo-certified and enables merchants to accept EMV as well …

Location-based sensor fusion technology for smartphones represents a "huge potential" for mobile advertising and retail, judges ABI Research. ABI Research forecasts that there will be one billion smartphones with location-based sensor fusion by 2016. Using location-based services, retailers can offer coupons on discounts to shoppers based on their location in shopping malls. In addition, indoor location services can be used by enterprises to track and manage assets: Location-based smartphone sensor fusion presents 'huge potential' for mobile commerce, says ABI -

Telecom Italia and Visa Europe have entered into a new strategic partnership in order to boost mobile payments throughout Italy. Both companies have shown a major interest in mobile commerce and have been working to break into this field for some time. Mobile commerce, however, is quite competitive and is filled with technology, telecommunications, and financial service firms that are all trying to grab the attention of consumers. It is for this reason that strategic partnerships are becoming more common in the mobile commerce sector.