Canadian food retailer Metro is making grocery savings more personal for shoppers with a mobile application and a Web site section that include a flyer with deals and weekly recipe ideas tailored to individual tastes and lifestyles. The app also includes personalized coupons that let the shopper earn air miles rewards on favorite products and the ability to easily add items to grocery lists. The program shows how mobile can be leveraged to integrate value in the grocery vertical with the shopper lifestyle.

Kenneth Cole hopes to grab some of the excitement around wearables for itself by rolling out a smartwatch collection that arrives in twelve styles and enables users to take selfies, suggesting that more fashion brands will begin to permeate the wearables space. The fashion brand has teamed up with Geneva Watch Group for Kenneth Cole Connect, which is set to launch in stores in April. As Apple introduces its iWatch, more brands are seeking to take advantage of the new technology that allows consumers to control their smartphones remotely as well as make a fashion statement with the accessories.

More than 70 percent of consumers expect brand digital channels to have knowledge of in-store product availability, according to a new report by L2.  Accommodating both digital and in-store trends requires brands to adapt to ecommerce expectations of click-and-collect or free shipping, but also adhere to in-store demands. Many traditional brands face pressure from online retailers to offer better options for consumers turning to digital for both browsing and shopping.

Jack in the Box is extending the life of a record-setting 80-foot-tall coupon and bringing it to consumers across the country through the power of mobile, showing how even a live event can be turned into a mobile offer. The hamburger chain recently won the Guinness World Records title for the world’s largest coupon to raise awareness of its new Buttery Jack burger. It is tapping social media to fuel users to share a photo of the coupon, with consumers able to redeem the offer by showing a photo of the coupon on their mobile phone at any location.

Brands such as Wells Fargo and Dunkin’ Donuts are discovering that users of navigational application Waze are more likely to drive to a retail location after seeing associated Pins or Takeovers.  Waze has released its first set of efficacy studies and also found a lift in ad recall for users exposed to brands’ Pins and Takeovers, two marketing offerings available on the app. One advertiser, Wells Fargo, found that Waze users exposed to an offer for a free credit report were more likely to visit a branch. “For Wells Fargo, the bank wanted to reach consumers close to Wells Fargo …

Global on-demand jet charter service Victor is expanding within the United States with the assistance of its new mobile application. The application provides real time charter pricing, aircraft and crew specifications, jet comparisons, instant booking and more. Expanding into the U.S. market will increase demand for Victor, but with the addition of its app, interest will peak even higher among private flyers intrigued by the ease and convenience.

Consumers and merchants alike, within the payments arena, are entering an era full of technological reformation. From online banking, to the impending widespread replacement of traditional debit/credit cards with contactless-enabled smartphones, it seems the necessity of those plastic cards we’ve all been trained to hold so dearly is dying down. A recent innovation entering this space is the implementation of cardless ATMs. Banks outside the U.S. have already begun adopting technology, and it’s slowly but surely making its way to the U.S. Wintrust Financial, a Chicago-based regional bank, recently implemented software that enables cardless usage in 200 ATMs in the …

The call for collaboration was made by the PCI Security Standards Council International Director Jeremy King, during the recently concluded inaugural Middle East Forum. The event brought together the regional payments industry’s key players to discuss the issue of card security and understand how best global standards – developed by PCI – can be deployed in the Middle East. “This is an active, mobile and tech-minded region that is moving quickly to capitalize on the economic opportunity of e-commerce and m-commerce,” said Jeremy King, International Director of PCI Security Standards Council. “But as digital payments rise it’s important that we …

Rumors are ripe that Apple has reached common ground with China UnionPay, and we might witness an Apple Pay rollout in China within the next month. As reported by kapron ASIA, Bank of China has cited in a Weibo post that April 15th could be the day of the official announcement, while April 28th could be the official launch day. China’s mobile payment market presents a positive opportunity for Apple Pay. Substantial NFC infrastructure is already present in China. There are over 4 million POS terminals in China that support UnionPay’s NFC enabled Quickpass technology. There has been an explosive growth in mobile payments …

Facebook hopes to transform the way  customers communicate with retailers by re-inventing the customer service platform. Facebook and its partner Zendesk, a customer service platform firm, are teaming up to allow businesses to provide scalable and responsive customer service to the more than 600 million people worldwide who use Facebook's popular Messenger app. The social media giant is inviting retailers and other companies to develop software that allows customers to communicate instantly with them through Messenger. “Messenger has changed the way people communicate with their friends, and now it’s opening new opportunities for businesses to interact with their customers,” said Adrian …