Equatorial Commercial Bank (ECB) this morning picked up an innovation to integrate traditional banking onto the mobile platform for its customers. Mobile money has contributed a lot in terms of financial inclusion in the Kenyan banking industry. Through an early morning partnership deal with Airtel Kenya, ECB will offer its customers an opportunity to access cash more easily other than from the Kenswitch ATM networks from the Airtel Money platform. The bank is focusing on the retail and SME market segments; it is helping customers to save travel costs by access cash from their Airtel money wallets. On the other …

UK mCommerce sales grew by 129 per cent year-on-year in July, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. Meanwhile, overall online retail sales grew by just nine per cent year-on-year - the weakest growth seen since January 2010. This caused the Index to drop two per cent on June, the first monthly drop in its 13-year history. "There is no doubt that the prolonged heatwave had a detrimental effect for online retailers," said Tina Spooner, chief information officer at IMRG. "It is interesting to note, however, that it is only desktop sales that appear to have been impacted; the …

Isis, the mobile payments wallet that is backed by three of the leading carriers in the country has recently announced that it will be going nationwide before the end of the year and it has just tied up a number of important contracts ahead of that rollout. The announcement is following the pilot trials that have been held at Salt Lake City and in Austin. The mobile payments wallet has partnered up with Amex, and Chase. The most recent partnership is with Chase, so that their Freedom, Sapphire, Slate, and JP Morgan Palladium cards will be supported by the service. …

Dunkin' Donuts has given its mobile payments strategy a jolt in the past year, evidenced by the 3.5 million application downloads and continuous marketing push behind its application. Since launching the mobile payments app a year ago, Dunkin' Donuts has used a variety of mediums, including a time-sensitive Twitter campaign last week, to market it. The company's most recent marketing highlights the app's store locator feature as a way to drive in-store traffic.

Smartphones have completely changed the way people conduct business. Instead of being glued to a desktop PC, consumers now have the option to order virtually anything using their smartphone or tablet. Over the last few years, hundreds of thousands of websites have begun to release mobile apps. Others have developed special sites for mobile devices. Many have done both. German startup Shopgate wants to serve the needs of those businesses. As a company that specializes in delivering mobile shopping solutions, Shopgate develops mobile websites for smartphones and tablets. The company also produces specific apps for iOS and Android devices.

The infamous 'cookie' digital code that is stored on a browser can now be easily disabled and many mobile phones don't utilize them at all, leaving data seekers empty handed. Now, publishers and advertisers are turning to fingerprinting technology to track users' online and mobile activities. "This technique allows a website to look at the characteristics of a computer such as what plugins and software you have installed, the size of the screen, the time zone, fonts and other features of any particular machine. These form a unique signature just like random skin patterns on a finger," according to Forbes.

M-Commerce software maker Proxama, which helps people use their mobile phones as wallets, is floating on Aim. It will list on Friday with a market value of over GBP20million after a reverse takeover of Aim-listed cash shell Longships, and is being advised by Grant Thornton. Proxama's customers include banks, who use its technology to help customers manage accounts on their phones and pay for goods by tapping their device onto a card reader. It also specialises in marketing campaigns, including the launch of the film X-Men: First Class, where phone users can download the trailer from a poster.

Retailers are gathering a ton of data from mobile devices, but most do not know how to put big data into full operational use or get the real value out of it, according to Media.The white paper it released shows that predictive analytics and real-time tools can help personalize and improve the mobile shopping experience. The white paper talks about the importance of personalization. It says, "A search for a product might begin on a smartphone, while order fulfillment is finalized on a PC or tablet. Being able to identify the same user across devices is necessary to create a …

Ahead of the weekend, Zapper launched a new web service designed to make e-Commerce more user-friendly. Called "Scan-to-Login," Zapper says this easy to implement resource is compatible with major site builders.

Australia has set the pace for smartphone and tablet penetration. Yet it is lagging on ecommerce. Latest local figures are hard to come by but Nielsen data released this week in the US suggests that only around a quarter of smartphone owners user them to make purchases. It would be a surprise if that figure was any higher in Australia. Arguably that's because they either don't like, or don't trust the payment infrastructure, or providers simply haven't made it simple and attractive enough. MasterCard is hoping to change that by tying on some new bells and whistles to its digital …