Venmo may be the next big thing in mobile commerce. Venmo is owned by PayPal and is well on its way to becoming a very powerful and influential mobile commerce application. The app was launched less than two years ago and has already managed to reach the same level of transaction volume as Starbucks' own mobile commerce application. Venmo has managed to win favor with consumers due to its convenient nature and its peer-to-peer, social features. PayPal has held a strong place in the mobile field for some time, but the company has been struggling to retain this position recently. …

A new report by the Boston Consulting Group and Facebook found that travel companies are inadequately embracing mobile. Consumers are rapidly turning to mobile for various purposes and hotels and travel agencies without a viable mobile presence will continue to miss out on this shifting behavior. The "Travel Goes Mobile" report explores how early mobile adopters are sprinting ahead while stragglers are doing just that.

Beauty marketer L'Oreal Paris has released its Makeup Genius, a mobile application that allows consumers to virtually test beauty products. The user can create lists of her favorite products, but is unable to purchase directly through the app. Despite a lack of mobile commerce, L'Oreal's Makeup Genius also offers the latest on beauty trends in the virtual space.

UK retail e-commerce sales will rise 16.0 per cent this year, eMarketer predicts, while m-commerce will rise by 64.8 per cent. Tablet sales are growing considerably faster than smartphone sales in the UK, even though smartphone usage is far more common than tablet usage, and is expected to account for two-thirds of total UK m-commerce sales in 2014. "M-commerce is seeing such good growth for a couple of reasons: Mobile device ownership is rising rapidly, and consumers are becoming more comfortable making purchases on these devices. Tablets, in particular, offer a larger and more tactile interface for online shopping, which …

Mobile commerce technology is beginning to enter the mainstream. This technology had once occupied the fringes of the retail industry and business in general, but is becoming more widely accepted as companies begin to understand how much consumers are relying on mobile technology. Many consumers are using their mobile devices in their daily lives, whether for entertainment or social purposes, and this trend is not likely to dissipate within the foreseeable future. If businesses do not engage mobile consumers, they could well lose their relevance entirely. NFC technology already comprises much of the infrastructure supporting mobile payments, but this technology …

If the writing was not on the wall already that the use of proximity-aware beacons was the future of retail, now we have some data to back it up. According to a study by inMarket, the use of beacons (Apple brands these as iBeacons, and has already shipped millions of capable devices) in retail stores caused a 19x increase in interactions with advertised products, a 16.5x increase in app usage in-store and a 6.4x increase in the likelihood that a shopper kept an app that sent them a beacon message on their phones. Those stats are incredibly impressive. inMarket says …

Abercrombie & Fitch is reportedly rolling out charging stations for mobile phones and tablets in its stores. According to TheStreet, there are currently two Abercrombie & Fitch stores with mobile charging stations installed, and the retailer plans to roll out the stations at several more Abercrombie and Hollister stores by the end of the year. Abercrombie is also providing lockers so customers can leave their mobile devices to charge without worrying about them being stolen.

Throughout the past year, Australia's major banks have become more and more invested in mobile payments that utilize NFC technology and all if the "Big Four" - Westpac, CBA, ANZ and NAB - now have contactless cards available for their customers. The Australian bank also predicted that three million people will make approximately five contactless mobile payments, on average, each month in 2015, which will result in a $3 billion industry. Mobile payment solutions embedded with near field communication (NFC) technology are believed to be the tech that is the most probable to advance mobile proximity commerce in the years …

US telco giant AT&T has enlisted mobile commerce firm CorFire to help it deliver non-payment related NFC services to customers. AT&T is focussing its mobile NFC payments efforts on Isis, the joint venture it established with T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. But it is also developing other contactless services through its AT&T NFC Connect service, tapping CorFire technology for things like access control.

John Lewis has beaten the likes of Argos, Amazon and Tesco to be named the best retailer on mobile. The Mobile Commerce 2014 report from EPiServer looked at the top 20 retailers in the UK, asking 1,000 UK smartphone and tablet users to score each on their retail experience across mobile sites, Android and iOS apps. More specifically, the criteria included location-based tools, omnichannel experiences such as 'click and collect', a direct line to contact customer services, personalised content and social follows and sharing.