Canada's National Bank is the country's leader in mobile banking services because of its strong performance in all criteria categories, including a top-ranking Web app for both design and transactions, according to a new report from Surviscor. The Surviscor 2013 Canadian Mobile Banking scorCard report assesses the mobile features and functionality offered by Canada's six biggest banks. National Bank took over the top spot from CIBC, which was last year's winner. "What you can do on a smartphone has changed even in the last year," said Glenn LaCoste, president of Surviscor, Toronto. "Banks keep increasing what they can do because …

U.S. label Ralph Lauren is targeting last-minute holiday shoppers with banner advertisements for its Soft Ricky handbag found on New York magazine's fashion-focused blog The Cut's mobile Web site. Ralph Lauren placed its ads in three locations on The Cut's Web site to ensure that the reader takes notice when scrolling through the day's content, a move that extends the label's ongoing promotion for the handbag collection. Ad placement is key for marketers looking to attract, and also distract, the reader away from their original task.

Wells Fargo recently became the third bank to sign up for the mobile commerce venture Isis, Mobile Payments Today reports. The San Francisco-based bank now allows its Visa consumer credit cardholders to load their cards onto an Isis Mobile Wallet stored on an NFC-enabled smartphone, making payments, redeeming coupons, and presenting loyalty credentials at contactless POS terminals. Wells Fargo joins American Express and JPMorgan Chase as the participating banks in Isis' mobile wallet, which launched nationwide last month. Well's Fargo is protecting purchases made using the Mobile Wallet with its Wells Fargo Zero Liability program, which protects cardholders against fraud …

GoPago co-founder and CTO Vincenzo di Nicola has told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that a deal has been done with Amazon, which will use the start-up's technology as the base of "a new ambitious project". In a Facebook post screen-capped on Quora, di Nicola revealed that he is not joining Amazon as part of the deal, which has yet to be confirmed by the e-commerce giant. Founded in 2009, GoPago developed a smartphone application that allows consumers to browse, order, and pay for local goods and services before collecting them instore, skipping queues.

If you're among the last minute shoppers looking to satisfy a still-unfinished Christmas shopping list, there's an excellent possibility that your mobile device is your new best friend (assuming it wasn't already). According to published reports over the weekend, last minute shoppers are turning to the web - and, in particular, their smartphones and tablets - in record numbers to complete the final purchases of this holiday shopping season.

According to NRF's latest holiday survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics, nearly half (49.9%) of holiday shoppers indicate they plan to do the remainder of their holiday shopping online, the highest percent in the survey's 11-year history. As of Dec. 9, before the most recent weekend, 32 million holiday shoppers had not even started shopping. "It comes as no surprise that Americans are eager to shop online in the coming weeks as busy schedules and a shift in the calendar have made the convenience offered by retailers' mobile apps and websites even more attractive this year," said NRF president …

Ann Inc.'s Loft is building up its email efforts through a mobile advertising campaign that gives consumers a chance to win prizes in exchange for opting in to email newsletters. Loft's "Have Your Moment" campaign requires that consumers submit their email address to play a quick game. Since the retailer does not have a mobile site, these kinds of promotions give Loft a way to interact with tablet and smartphone shoppers.

As we wrap up another year, looking back at the retail and technology trends that shaped 2013 can help us gauge what retailers can expect for 2014. Heated competition from online retailers and the lack of traction for mobile wallets show we're still in the early stages of digital and merchant convergence. The industry will continue to evolve in 2014 as mobile commerce continues to grow and retailers put more focus on creating targeted, personalized and seamless shopping experience for consumers. What can we expect from commerce and mobile marketing in 2014?

Very few entrepreneurs quit their day job outright when they launch a new business version: they're often trying to make things work after business hours until they hit the tipping point where it's "safe" to go things on their own. That means the technology they use to build their initial business needs to be simple (yet professional) and (everyone's favorite adjective) cost-effective. That's the crowd that e-commerce service provider Weebly, a San Francisco-based startup funded by the likes of Sequoia Capital, Baseline Ventures, Ron Conway and Y Combinator, is seeking to attract. The company got its start as a Web …

The mobile sales channel has seen a lot of hype in the run up to Christmas both last year and this year. There's no doubt that many companies have invested considerable sums in their m-commerce channels: according to US consultancy, the E-tailing Group, 30 percent of retailers spent more than $100,000 on m-commerce platforms last year. Surprisingly though, while mobile commerce technology continues to evolve, research from SDL shows that the majority of consumers in the UK (64 percent) are not using tablets or smartphones to purchase gifts any more this year than they did in 2012. This might lead …