The speed with which mobile payments services are growing and are becoming accepted have now made it clear to most large banks that if they want to be able to remain relevant into the future, they will need to be able to offer their customers the ability to pay for goods and services through the use of smartphones. Even retailers are starting to come up with their own opportunities to hop onto the mobile payments bandwagon and are coming up with their own unique strategies. As the shift toward smartphones as a platform continues, a growing number of companies from …

Walmart's acquisition of digital recipe start-up Yumprint highlights the growing role that consumer packaged goods companies will have in helping retailers create compelling in-store offers and advertising. Last week, Walmart acquired Yumprint, which is a start-up that publishes recipes from more than 2,000 blogs and Web sites. Given Walmart's sophisticated use of mobile in-store, the deal could highlight some bigger partnerships between the retailer and its CPG brands. "Recipes are about content creation, and CPG companies that sell food are huge marketers," said Sucharita Mulpuru, New York-based principal analyst at Forrester Research.

Powa Technologies, a UK-based e-commerce startup that has raised nearly $100 million in outside funding in the last seven months, is today finally taking the wraps off its flagship product: PowaTag, an e-commerce app that combines elements of mobile payments, QR Codes and audio recognition to provide an all-in-one solution for brands and retailers to target customers in different physical and online environments and encourage them to buy products right then and there. Powa tells me that it's signed up some 240 brands to the product so far - including large retailers like French-based supermarket giant Carrefour and Universal Music. …

Groupon Inc was one of the fastest growing companies ever in its early days, and created an entirely new business category. Just three years after its launch, the company reached $2 billion annual revenue. However, its growth has slowed to a single-digit rate for the past several quarters. That prompted the Chicago-based company to change its leadership team and business plan. Groupon has been taking massive steps to capitalize on mobile, lower its dependence on email channel, and boost its international operations. Barrington Research analyst Jeff Houston said in a research note that Groupon Inc is well-positioned to reaccelerate its …

Sephora continues to make content a key part of its strategy to create a mobile and social powerhouse, as evidenced through a new application feature that centers around the retailer's loyalty program. The beauty retailer has rolled out an initiative called Beauty Board within its iPhone app that leverages mobile photo-sharing to connect loyalty members with each other. Beauty Board builds on an effort that Sephora rolled out last year called My Beauty Bag. "Sephora has always been seen as a pioneer in mobile commerce, so it's no surprise they've decided to integrate a social component into their user experience," …

A recent study has found that while the proportion of online sales being made from mobile devices is growing rapidly, it is still only a small but incredibly active minority of British consumers that participate in this practice, according to FashionUnited. The survey was conducted by Fits.me and while 30 per cent of clothing purchases made via safe shopping online originate from smartphones and tablets, this is actually representative of just 15 per cent of the population. The figures suggest that people who are into using m-commerce platforms do so with incredible regularity, with most other consumers either choosing to …

Telecom service provider Vodafone would focus on growth in data revenue stream by attracting more customers to 2G and 3G platforms besides foraying into mobile commerce facility enabling cashless transactions for users, a company official said here today. "Our priority is that. We will continue to focus on growing our data as a revenue stream and getting more and more users both on 2G and 3G platform. We will also make a foray into mobile commerce through M-Pesa...," Vodafone South Ltd Business Head-Tamil Nadu Apoorva Mehrotra told reporters here. The company, as part of tapping the 65% of users who …

Just minutes after a quarterly financial report that left Wall Street deflated and Groupon Inc.'s stock price battered, Eric Lefkofsky is as stoked as ever. The online-deal company has "the chance to be one of the truly great Internet businesses of the world and maybe the great mobile-commerce company of the next decade," the co-founder and CEO says in a small conference room near his small office. "Ultimately the question is, when people open up their phone and they want to buy something, where do they start? We believe we can create a compelling proposition for them to check Groupon …

Following efforts to build a database of mobile opt-in users, hardware store chain Ace Hardware has been actively remarketing to the list, helping it determine that the lifetime value of these customers is $183.60. While a growing number of merchants are leveraging SMS opt-in programs for delivering offers to loyal customers, the best practices when it comes to frequency and type of offer are still being determined. Ace Hardware has been at the forefront in this area, serving as the first retailer to test a new program last summer for tracking mobile coupons from discovery to redemption, resulting in a …

While consumer packaged goods brands continue to bet on mobile to connect more directly with consumers, new technologies such as beacons will not make it any easier for brands to reach in-store shoppers unless they partner with retailers. Both retailers and CPG brands want access to consumers while they are in-store with retailers fueling some of the technology and CPG brands bringing in consumer insight. At the same time though, CPG brands are beginning to establish closer one-on-one relationships with consumers that do not rely on retailers, which could wane down with the growing interest in beacons and in-store technologies.