Hours after BuzzFeed News published this report, City Hall asked Titan to remove the devices, which could have been used to push ads — and track phones.Oct. 6, 2014, at 1:21 p.m. A company that controls thousands of New York City’s phone booth advertising displays has planted tiny radio transmitters known as “beacons” — devices that can be used to track people’s movements — in hundreds of pay phone booths in Manhattan, BuzzFeed News has learned. And it’s all with the blessing of a city agency — but without any …

Despite the obvious threat posed by Apple Pay, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey’s mobile payments start-up Square has raised US$150m in an investment round that vales the company at US$6bn. The latest round has been led by the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. Previous investors, including Goldman Sachs and Rizvi Traverse Management, also took part in the investment, according to The New York Times.

Mobile commerce has been thriving in many parts of the world, but in Brazil, its growth has been stymied. One of the most significant challenges that mobile payments faces in the country is unstable bandwidth. There is also a general lack of awareness among consumers about what mobile commerce is and retailers have expressed disinterest in mobile payments because of limited profit margins. These issues are making Brazil a relatively unattractive mobile commerce market. Retailers have expressed their concerns regarding the low profit margins they see in the mobile space. Deal of the day promotions, which are common throughout the retail …

Leather goods maker Coach has launched a new application to streamline reporting and digitize the business from behind the scenes. The retailer teamed with business intelligence solutions provider MicroStrategy to build the app for internal use. As retail becomes more digitized, Coach decided to explore options to become hands-on with data and offer quicker solutions to better its business.

Coca-Cola is availing itself of the growing trend toward Wi-Fi use by smartphone owners with a new strategy to enable wireless connectivity through its branded vending machines.  The Wi-Fi-enabled vending machines are being tested by Coca-Cola and British Telecom in two communities in South Africa. The strategy is the latest example of how Coca-Cola continues to lead the way in mobile marketing by coming up with clever ways to tie its brand to consumers’ love of their smartphones. 

Carrier billing provider Boku has partnered with UK mobile network operators O2, EE and Vodafone to make it possible for customers to charge public transport tickets, takeaway food, cups of coffee and other “click and collect” physical world purchases to their mobile phone bill. Boku has been providing carrier billing for digital content purchases for five years and works with 260 carriers around the world. It has made the move into physical world payments after getting an e-money license that enables it to operate outside of the European Union’s Payment Services Directive (PSD) regulations, which limits carrier billing purchases to digital content.

Miami International Airport has become the first airport in the world to have a complete and open deployment of beacons, which are available to all of the airport’s stakeholders via the SITA Common-Use Beacon Registry, which covers entrances, check-in, gate, baggage claim and valet parking zones across the airport. “The passenger experience at Miami Airport is our number one concern and iBeacon technology allows us to make it even better,” stated Maurice Jenkins, Division Director, Information Systems, Miami International Airport.

“We project that retail will change more in the next five years than it has in the last 50 to 100 years.” So says Matt Winn, global retail COO and head of retail for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield. Winn tells GlobeSt.com that “everyone—from the UPS guys to e-commerce retailers to those of us in the commercial real estate space—are adapting to the new world of omnichannel retailing.” He explains that there is a retail revolution at the moment led largely by what he calls the “three M’s:” mobility or mobile commerce, millennials, and metropolitan areas.

Credit card company Discover is combining its former ShopDiscover.com site and Discover Extras to launch Discover Deals, accessible on mobile Web and the Discover mobile application, to streamline the location of coupons and offers. Combining more than 150 deals from top brands and retailers, Cashback Bonus card members are among the larger consumer base looking for the best deals to snatch for holiday gifts. By putting these deals in one virtual location, users can find these more easily and are more likely to remember to use them.

In a recent development and according to few sources (Appadvice, Businessinsider), Apple is rumored to launch its much awaited payment platform Apple Pay on 20th October, along with the launch of new version of its operating system, IOS 8.1. There has not been any formal announcement from the company yet and the work is still going on on security features of Apple Pay, but sources close to the company said that the platform will be available for use for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus users once they download and upgrade to iOS 8.1. , that means the customers should be …