The next generation of mobile innovation for online travel agencies is moving away from transactions to influencing all parts of the travel experience, including loyalty programs, personalized messages and real-world sales. Mobile Marketer looked at the mobile offerings from five online travel brands: Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, Orbitz and Priceline. Although streamlining the mobile commerce experience is still a big priority for many, brands are also looking at how to leverage other mediums to gain market share. "We're actively thinking about ways to use mobile devices in the future of hotel travel," said John Caine, chief product officer at Priceline, Norwalk, …

Market research firm yStats has released a new report concerning the mobile commerce sector in Europe. The report, called "Europe M-Commerce Snapshot 2014," suggests that more consumers are becoming interested in the idea of shopping online and purchasing products from their mobile devices. Mobile shopping is praised among consumers for its convenient nature as it can take place anywhere and at any time. Mobile shopping is particularly popular among commuters that have limited time to visit physical stores. The report notes that mobile commerce is particularly popular in Western Europe, where there is a high level of smartphone and tablet …

Launched in Poland through the group's central and eastern European subsidiary Bank Zachodni WBK, the BZWBK24 mobile banking app allows users in Poland to shop at merchants using the app. They can arrange home delivery, send items such as flowers or buy bus tickets in 30 cities. The app will soon have other abilities added, including booking flights, hotels, tickets to cinemas, ordering taxis and takeaway food from 1,500 restaurants. The Superwallet product was developed by mobile technology company eLeader and is currently being offered as a white label solution for banks. According to the firm, the biggest advantage of …

Google continues to move away from near-field-communication with a bigger bet on a cloud-based system that makes mobile payments accessible to more marketers even though retailers are still skeptical on the Internet giant's intentions. Ariel Bardi, head of payments at Google, Mountain View, CA, discussed how the manufacturer plans to stay ahead in mobile payments earlier this week during a presentation at the Electronic Transactions Association's Transact 2014 show. Google Wallet originally made a big bet on near-field-communications when it launched in 2011, but will now leverage host car emulation - or HCE - to store credit card credentials versus …

Subway has enlarged its mobile ordering areas with the start of app pilot program at its Manhattan stores, Mobile Commerce Daily reports. The mobile ordering app, first debuting at certain California locations, allows customers to send orders to a specific store via their smartphones. "The world is becoming more and more efficient, and with the launch of the Subway mobile app it will enable the customer to order on their mobile device and have it ready for pick up avoiding or lessening their wait time," said Mike Cochrane, sales director at Atimi Software who is an expert on mobile apps. …

Amazon has just launched its latest mobile gadget in the form of the Dash, a handheld device that is meant to make it a great deal easier for consumers to be able to add items to their shopping lists. According to the website, Every member of the family can use Dash to easily add items to your AmazonFresh shopping list." The mobile gadget simply needs to be directed at the barcode on an item in the kitchen that is running low - perhaps the bottle of ketchup, the jar of peanut butter, or a box of cereal, for example - …

We have seen this movie before. KGI Securities analyst Ming Chi-Kuo has made predictions in the past and many of them have gone right. He has a good reputation given so many others go wrong. But he may or may not be right all the time. This time he says iWatch and iPhone 6 will have NFC. We always like to do some facts finding before doing any kind of crystal ball gazing. So here we are with our research on patents that Apple has got in the recent past. April 2010: Patent citing "iTravel" app. The iTravel app would …

When it comes to which social media platforms to bet on, Urban Outfitters thinks outside the box with a new application update that heavily plays up the retailer's growing fan base on Wanelo. According to Wanelo, Urban Outfitters has built up a following on the social site that amasses some of the bigger social sites. The brand has a following of 2,435,965 on Wanelo, 134,632 on Pinterest and 1,300,245 on Instagram. Urban Outfitters has updated its iPhone app with two new features that reflect this shift towards favoring engagement versus sales in mobile.

Consumers in the UK are set to spend almost GBP8bn on their smartphones and tablets in 2014, according to a study. The research, commissioned by RetailMeNot, shows that Britain's total spend online on phones and tablets this year will reach GBP7.9bn (EUR9.5bn, $13.2bn) - almost half of what the whole of Europe is forecasted to spend and GBP3bn more than in 2013. Mobile shoppers in Europe are set to spend GBP19.8bn in 2014 on m-commerce, almost twice as much as 2013's spend of GBP10.7bn. Almost half of the population of Europe now has a smartphone, but only 20% have used …

As eBay shares its vision of being a partner to retailers and helping them become "omnichannel" - a reference to serving customers online, offline and mobile - its payments unit is looking to do the same. PayPal is expanding its Partner Program to be more compelling to additional types of providers and is set to launch the new program this summer. Among the vendors and developers PayPal wishes to work with are POS solution providers, processing resellers, system integrators, associations, and peripheral partners. PayPal said it wants to collaborate with "payment industry innovators" on all kinds of solutions whether they …