Apple Inc. is enacting a number of significant enhancements to its Apple Pay mobile payment app, including adding support for rewards programs and store-issued credit and debit cards. During a June 8 keynote address at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Jennifer Bailey, VP of Apple Pay, said that retailers, including Dunkin' Donuts, Walgreens, Wegmans, and Kohl's, will support the new reward card functionality. “By integrating with Apple Pay in all of our stores, Kohl’s customers can choose how they want to pay, whether using their Kohl’s Charge or Yes2You Rewards loyalty points, payments are easy and secure,” said Kevin Mansell, Kohl’s …

Which Wich Superior Sandwiches is rolling out a new mobile application and digital ordering platform, enabling customers to order and pay for hand-crafted sandwiches on their smartphones and pick them up at the restaurant. A slew of major restaurant chains, including Taco Bell and Starbucks, are piloting mobile-ordering capabilities, demonstrating the technology’s importance in the competitive sector. Now, Which Wich fans will be able to skip the line at bricks-and-mortar locations and grab their orders in a time-efficient manner, a move which may help the brand drive sales among consumers on lunch breaks or those with busy schedules.

A recent report produced by the Centre for Retail Research (CRR) and Vouchercodes.co.uk states that retailers in the UK could be missing out on as much as £6bn a year in sales because of a lack of investment in mobile. This comes at a time when retailers are reporting an increase in mobile spend, coupled with many stating that their mobile share of online sales has doubled since last year. It would seem however from this most recent report that there is still work to do for retailers to catch up with the ever increasing consumer use of mobile for …

Mobile application users are quick to judge the quality of a brand based on their initial search and sign-up for a mobile application, suggesting why Uber leads all sharing-economy apps in popularity despite receiving mixed user-experience marks, according to an Applause report. The 48 most popular sharing-economy apps in the United States on average lag all other apps in quality, according to Applause’s report, “The Best Sharing Economy Apps.”  With just eight sharing-economy apps such as Waze earning respectable quality scores, the findings suggest that while customer-obsessed brands built the economic model in which individuals are able to borrow or …

Heineken is brewing up a strategic mixture of mobile and draft technology to help the brand grab the attention of craft beer fans and drive sales.  BrewLock, a 20-liter, single-use plastic container, functions as a type of microbrewery by allowing consumers to receive the same taste, consistency and quality they would find in a brewery, thanks to its two protected chambers. A complementary mobile application enables users to locate bars serving BrewLock and watch a 3D demonstration of the technology, will likely help Heineken maintain its stronghold in the beer sector and reach a greater amount of millennial consumers.

As mobile ads move from being in their early infancy toward the next phase in their maturity, many companies and marketers are still scrambling to try to find the right metrics to be able to measure their effectiveness. The report was issued by NinthDecimal, a mobile intelligence firm based in San Francisco. What it revealed was that mobile ads that were having an impact on the behaviors of the consumers who saw them, and that this affect was on the rise. The study used data from 2014 in the second and fourth quarters . It measured advertisements displayed through Android …

Since making its way to China last year, Uber has grown exponentially in cities like Hangzhou and Chengdu. In fact, during its first nine months in China, the ride-hailing company brought in more than 400 times as many rides as it did in during its first nine months in New York. These numbers come from an email to investors sent by Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, which the Financial Times published Friday morning. Uber now boasts nearly 1 million trips a day in China—and Kalanick plans to maximize on its momentum by investing more than $1 billion in the country this year, according to the …

Office Depot saw usage of its mobile application jump 300 percent thanks to an augmented reality campaign that strived to help students, teachers and parents pinpoint their passions. The #GottaGetINSPIR5D campaign, powered by augmented reality platform Aurasma, won big at the Mobile Excellence Awards, grabbing the title of Best Entertainment Related Marketing Campaign. The technology is being tapped by an growing number of brands to better connect with consumers and provide more enticing calls-to-action to further app engagement.

The Apple Watch announcement not only stirred interest in the product itself, but also made the smartwatch category significantly more credible, according to a new report by Digital Luxury Group. Both the product announcement in September 2014 and the release announcement in March 2015 yielded dramatic rises in online searches for Apple Watch across the world, which had a cascading effect across other brands as consumers sought to understand and find the best deals in this nascent category. The buzz surrounding the Apple Watch has transformed the potential of the smartwatch category, forcing luxury brands to wade in and experiment with …

Expedia is boosting its mobile momentum with a series of new application features, including the ability to book rental cars, a “Book Now, Pay Later” functionality and a redesigned launch screen. The updates were designed in response to recent Expedia research on mobile travel behaviors, which are catching fire among consumers who prefer to book last-minute deals on smartphones and tablets. Users of the app will now be able to peruse a wider variety of booking options and treat Expedia as a one-stop shop for all of their travel needs, ranging from flights, accommodations and activities.