For the past year or so, Australia’s banks have been telling us that near-field communications, or NFC, technology built into many smartphones is going to usher in the age of the mobile wallet. There’ll be no need to carry a bundle of credit cards crammed into a physical wallet to make purchases, the banks have said: your mobile phone, loaded with electronic versions of the cards, will henceforth do the job.

Amazon’s Zappos is reaching fitness fans directly through their workouts with a new integration in the MapMyFitness mobile application enabling users to track mileage for their shoes and make purchases. The new Gear Tracker feature is the first native integration for MapMyFitness, which offers mobile and desktop solutions for users to track their fitness workouts. For fitness fans, the Gear Tracker experience is another way to support their workout needs.

Office Depot sees potential for boosting its points-based loyalty program by allowing customers to earn discounts for performing certain actions with their mobile devices while shopping in stores. The Delray Beach, FL-based chain of office supply stores has long been at the forefront of mobile innovation, as evidenced by its current augmented reality campaign that ties in with musical group R5. It sees mobile as more than a commerce tool, but a marketing extension of the brand. 

Here’s what happened in the first week of August: $1.2 Billion in financial activity was observed across a variety of investment types – VC funding, private placements, etc.  Of that total, $1,053.6 M was the driven by strategic or venture –backed investments the biggest transaction was the 10 percent stake investment of Philippine Long Distance Telephone Coin in Rocket Internet for $446 M. The second was the acquisiton of TouchNet Information Systems, Inc. by Heartland Payment Systems for $375 M.

Mobile is constantly changing and the way consumers view the shopping experience since today people are “wedded” to their devices and are always connected. Josh Bernoff, SVP of Idea Development for Forrester Research, said in his session at eTail East 2014 that by 2017 companies will spend $189 billion in the back-end area of their business in order to be competitive in digital and mobile. Bernoff said retailers will want to think about the mind of the customer, which begins with mobile devices and mobile applications.

Last year, Forrester predicted the U.S. mobile payment market will reach $90 billion by 2017. Given the popularity of mobile transaction apps like Square, PayPal and the recently launched Amazon Local Wallet, you'd think consumers would eat up the mobile wallet idea. But, no, it hasn't turned out that way at all. There are plenty of apps on the market that allow users to store loyalty cards, gift cards and even credit and debit card information. Mobile banking apps are offered by nearly every major financial institution and most credit card institutions offer apps as well. Yet, Google Wallet fell …

Olive Garden’s popular “Buy One, Take One” has returned in a new SMS-enabled promotion with Redbox, as the chain aggressively explores new ways of putting deals in front of as many eyes as possible. The “Dinner and a Movie” promotion allows Olive Garden guests to enjoy an entree in-store and get a second meal free to take home and pair with a Redbox movie. After customers order a “Buy One, Take One” item in-store, they text their receipt and store number to 727272 for a one-day rental.

To a degree that would likely shock an outsider, the payments industry loves a thrill. The industry’s favorite adjective is “disruptive” and an invisible disruption is, well, intuitively something that sounds objectively impossible—like a round square. Why such an atmosphere would attract innovative and revolutionary players is clear: the traction it might have amongst those who want to play nicely with others and collaborate is somewhat sketchier.

Yesterday’s launch of Spring, a fashion-focused mobile shopping app, is a testament that the mobile commerce space is growing. House Account, a mobile shopping app that launched a year and a half ago, focuses on boutiques instead of brands to help them compete in the e-commerce space. Travis Parsons, co-founder of House Account, says independent boutiques’ core business comes from connecting with customers, not through creating e-commerce websites for their brick and mortar stores. House Account is a location-based iOS app that allows these boutiques to extend their service via messaging.

McDonald’s, already a leading mobile marketer, kicked up its efforts a notch this year by leveraging real-time technology to support how consumers use their smartphones to engage with the real world while driving traffic into a nearby location. A McDonald’s campaign that ran earlier this year in Kuala Lumpur featured a digital billboard in a busy town square, with passersby able to direct what was happening on the screen by using their smartphones. The Save the Sundae Cone campaign drove significant brand engagement on a mobile Web site as well as coupon redemptions, helping McDonald’s to raise awareness of its ice …