About four-in-10 retailers plans on using both Apple Pay (43%) and predictive analytics (42%) by the end of 2015. According to a new study from IHL Group, “Retail 2018 – Retail Transformed,” things are looking up for both store growth and IT spend. The study also shows that distributed order management is becoming an important retail IT trend. For example, more than 70% of specialty stores say their next POS software system will be based on an architecture of a distributed order management system hub as the core. Beacons are also poised for dramatic growth. Only 2% of retailers are currently using …

Google Wallet — the search giant’s payments business that competes against PayPal and Apple Pay, among others — is today taking its first step outside of the U.S., in the form of money transfers. Users in the UK will now be able to send money to each other by way of an “attachment” in Gmail. Google tells us that the feature should be live today for 10-20% of Gmail users in the UK, rolling out over the next several days and available to everyone by Monday. Google confirms to us that this is the only Google Wallet service that is rolling out today …

Samsung may be planning to reveal its new mobile payments platform as early as next week. The company is expected to unveil the platform at the upcoming Mobile World Congress. The company is speculated to have partnered with Visa to develop the new service, which is called Samsung Pay. The new platform could serve as direct competition with Apple Pay, which has managed to establish a strong foothold in the mobile payments sector in the United States. Samsung has shown significant interest in mobile transactions in the past. Many of the company’s smartphones are equipped with NFC technology. This technology can be used …

With the Chinese New Year holiday less than three weeks away, many Chinese migrant workers have been using their mobile phones to buy tickets and shop for goods needed for the lunar holidays. As the use of e-commerce increases, however, online shopping fraud is also on the rise, and Trojans and phishing sites have become widespread, with Android users being the high-risk groups, Beijing Youth Daily reports.