Sam’s Club is offering customers daily deals on its site and application to enhance membership value and further augment its suite of mobile-friendly services, such as Club Pickup. The Shocking Values program is now set to offer consumers up to 60 percent off regular prices on major brands, and serves as a bid for the warehouse retailer to ramp up sales of its annual memberships by showcasing the significant discounts potential clients can expect to receive. Individuals can find the limited offers onwww.samsclub.com/shockingvalues or on the mobile app each day at 9 a.m. central time.

Ford Motor’s reveal of a new prototype electric bike with complementary smartphone and smartwatch applications seeks to ease urban commutes while continuing the automaker’s efforts to attract mobile-savvy millennial buyers. The unveiling of the ebike app, which will provide real-time information about weather, traffic, parking and public transportation, comes on top of Ford’s announcement it would launch a pilot car-sharing program in six United States cities and London for customers who finance their vehicles through Ford Motor Credit. With the announcements, Ford, known for its AppLink smartphone-integration system, burnishes its reputation as a technology-focused car brand, an image that resonates well …

Pinterest is one of the latest social companies to become involved in the mobile commerce space. The company recently announced its buyable pins, a feature through which users can purchase products that they see on the social site. Pins, or pictures, will serve as a way to expose users to new products, giving them an opportunity to purchase what they see on their mobile devices through the Pinterest application. The social media company will be working with Stripe in order to handle the mobile paymentsmade through its new feature. The idea behind the new feature is to make purchases on a mobile …

Move Inc.’s Realtor.com is teaming up with rent listing marketplace Airbnb, enabling interested homebuyers to use the mobile-optimized real estate site to book a property near their desired neighborhood in an effort to test out the location. Consumers who visit realtor.com will be able to rent accommodations across the United States via Airbnb’s platform directly, and may opt to stay in a loft, condominium or other property nearby or in their desired neighborhood. The ability to book on mobile devices will likely augment sales for realtor.com, as time-strapped consumers will appreciate being able to quickly choose and pay for a …

Everyone deserves a faster way to send money to friends, family and others. To settle US domestic payments more quickly, a lot of proposals and initiatives have been floated so far. There are a bunch of solutions that startups and FinTech firms have brought to the market over the last 5 years. Let’s start with the initiatives taken to make the slow ACH system “faster” (if it sounds to you like building faster horses than cars, you are not alone). NACHA, the electronic payments association, has finally proposed a solution to provide a new, efficient and ubiquitous capability to …

M1—in collaboration with CIMB, MasterCard and Wirecard—has launched a new mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solution that transforms smartphones and tablets into terminals. These terminals can accept credit, debit and prepaid card payments from customers anytime, anywhere. According to M1, the introduction of the M1 mPOS solution will offer merchants the benefit of a simple, safe and secure payment experience for their customers without the need to purchase, set up, and maintain a traditional POS terminal. Startups and businesses on-the-move will especially benefit from the mobility of the mPOS solution which allows it to accept payments anywhere with a wireless Internet …

 Back-to-school spending for both K-12 and college students is on the upswing this year. According to a study of more than 6,400 adults with children in K-12 and college conducted by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Prosper Insights, 29% of K-12 households plan to spend more in the current year than the previous year, as do almost 30% of college households. Among those who say the economy will impact their back-to-school and college spending plans, 32% of college shoppers plan to comparison shop online, up from 28% in 2014. The percentage of K-12 shoppers intending to perform online comparison shopping …

Ford Motor is moving deeper into wearables by extending its smartphone integration technology to allow wearers of Android Wear smartwatches to check the battery charge for an electric vehicle from their wrists. The extension of the MyFord mobile application was among several Ford technology announcements that included the appointment of Ford veteran Randy Visintainer to direct autonomous vehicle development and creation of a global program work team. The moves, along with Ford’s expansion of its dashboard system into wrist-based wearable computers, fit with the automaker’s effort to market its vehicles as technology hubs to reach mobile-savvy millennial buyers.

There’s a myopia blinding e-commerce players to the reality of opportunities in Southeast Asia. Everyone is looking at Asian economies from under the shadow China casts on the economic landscape, which can’t help but obscure the picture. Mobile commerce via WeChat, the dominance of Alipay and the entrenched online shopping behavior it is arguably more developed than Western markets. However, businesses are, in fact, wasting their time and resources expanding into China and Southeast Asia will be the next gold rush. Here’s why:

PayPal seems to be maintaining its lead in themobile wallets space. The company established a prominent place in the mobile commerce space years ago, being one of the first to draw attention to the convenient nature of mobile payments and through its offering of innovative digital and mobile services. PayPal has faced down competition from other companies that have entered into the mobile commerce space and has managed to excel where other companies have failed. According to a new survey from CMB, consumers seem to favor PayPal over others when it comes to mobile payments. The survey shows that 71% of …