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.

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. …

McDonald's is quietly testing an order-ahead and mobile payment app at a tiny handful of its more than 14,000 U.S. locations. The pilot is limited to 22 locations in the Columbus, Georgia area. Called "McD Ordering," the app links to a credit or debit card, which is automatically charged when a customer arrives and scans a QR code displayed at the restaurant. The phone then displays the customer's order number. Once everything's ready, the customer picks up food and drinks - without waiting in a line or interacting with a cashier.

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 …

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.

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 …

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 …

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 …

Back in October last year, Verifone had launched Way2Ride - their sound based mobile app - which runs on both traditional NFC enabled system and sound wave based NFC like system. On 17th June 2014, the company announced that taxi passengers in Philadelphia can now utilize Way2Ride in order to complete proximity payments. With this, users in Philadelphia can easily and securely pay for taxi rides with a tap of their mobile device. Recently, Way2ride won the 2014 CNP (CardNotPresent) Customer Choice Award in the Best Alternative Payment Solution category as well as the 2014 Appy Award for Best Mobile …

As BlackBerry desperately attempts to remain afloat and recreate itself into a position of relevance in the technology world, this Canadian handset maker is now placing a considerable focus on mobile payments as a new major element of its overall strategy. The company has now announced its intentions to become considerably more aggressive in the highly competitive and rapidly moving mobile payments environment. It has also confirmed a new three year agreement in which it has now entered with EnStream LP, which is a smartphone transactions joint venture that is owned by Bell, Rogers, and TELUS, the largest wireless carriers …