Popular mobile messaging platform Line is officially rolling out a new Line Pay service around the world next week. First unveiled back in October, Line Pay will let users connect their accounts with a credit card to make digital payments anywhere, directly from their phones. Initially, however, the service will be restricted to a handful of affiliated services and shops, such as Line’s own online store. Over time, the plan is for Line Pay to become increasingly embedded as an accepted method of payment in both online and offline stores. 

Wholesale retailer Sam’s Club is entering the hospitality sector and attempting to compete with travel mobile applications by offering its members a free Sam’s Club Travel app that includes savings on hotels, vacation homes, cars and other activities as well as in-app booking capabilities. As the first mass retailer to roll out a members-only app dedicated to business and leisure travel needs, Sam’s Club is poised to drive more downloads and entice mobile users to visit its extensive travel inventory.

Imagine you’re on your way to work. You walk up the stairs from the subway, and your coffee order is put in automatically. You walk intoStarbucks, past the line, tell the barista your name, and she hands you your tall latte with skim. This is the future of buying your morning coffee with the newly updated Starbucks mobile app. Today, a pilot program to buy coffee by iPhone launched in Portland, Oregon, which will allow you to buy coffee without standing in line to order or handing a cashier your phone to pay. 

Stripe, the e-commerce startup, Tuesday announced it has raised $70 million in a new funding round to put the company's valuation at $3.5 billion. The company, which was founded by a pair of brothers in 2009, was worth $1.75 billion in January. Bloomberg reported that Stripe's current funding round comes from new and exisiting investors. Previous investors inude venture capital firms Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital and Khosla Ventures. The new kid on the block this time around is Thrive Capital, according to Bloomberg.

Hair salon franchise Supercuts is claiming to be the first of its kind to offer a check-in mobile capability in the affordably priced hair salon industry. In an attempt to bring convenience to its customers, Supercuts updated its app for both iOS and Android, including adding advanced search options and check-in capability. The franchise knows that innovating on the mobile front will help drive repeat visits and attract new customers.

Walmart's CEO, Doug McMillon, revealed on CNBC just why his company cannot take its attention away from mobile commerce. According to the Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. boss, his company’s digital business is now overwhelmingly because of mobile. “It is an incredible time of change in retail. There is a transformation going on. This move to e-commerce, the way e-commerce and stores work together, what’s happening with mobile. We knew for example this holiday [season that] mobile would be really important for us but it’s been 70% of the orders that we’ve taken through our digital business,” McMillon said.

 

The Girl Scouts have long sold cookies in order to fund their programs, but this year, they are taking an entirely new direction in order to make sure that it is even easier to support them, by using online and mobile commerce tools. For the first time, Girl Scouts of America will now allow its members to use a mobile commerce app or personalized website in order to reach out to the people around them and sell the cookies that are critical to their ability to do what they do.

Competition among large companies participating in the mobile commerce field is heating up. Apple has delivered a strong blow to its competitors by entering into the field with its own mobile payments service, called Apple Pay. The service has a veritable armada of retailers supporting it and has also helped many consumers participate in mobile commerce. The service has also had an unintended effect, as Apple competitors have reported that they have seen a dramatic increase in mobile payments made through their own services since Apple Pay was launched. Apple Pay may soon have a very powerful competitor that aims to establish …

BeaconStream, a proximity-based mobile marketing and advertising platform based on Apple’s iBeacon technology, will start piloting beacons in malls in Bengaluru and Chennai. iBeacon is Apple trademarked technology for an indoor positioning system that runs on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), also known as Bluetooth Smart. The technology enables an iOS device or other hardware to send push notifications to iOS devices in close proximity. They can also be used by the Android operating system. “After Apple introduced the technology, many vendors started manufacturing these devices. We are one of them, and we design the beacon and hold the intellectual property …

Depending on whom you ask, web sales on Cyber Monday grew between 8.5% and 16.0%. But one universal trend emerged on Cyber Monday and throughout the holiday weekend: Consumers are browsing and buying more online with their mobile devices. IBM, which estimated online sales on Monday increased 8.5% over 2013, found mobile sales accounted for 22% of all Cyber Monday sales and 41.2% of online traffic. Tablets accounted for 12.9% of sales, compared to 9.1% of sales for smartphones. Consumers browse more using their mobile phones however, with 28.5% of online traffic stemming from smartphones and 12.5% coming from tablets.