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 …

Dunkin’ Donuts has confirmed its move into mobile ordering and is introducing an integration with payment platform Visa Checkout ahead of the public rollout, expected to be later this year. Visa Checkout is now available for use on DunkinDonuts.com, as well as the mobile application, providing customers with the ability to pay for a purchase with the tap of a button and reload their virtual Dunkin’ Donuts cards. As the brand privately pilots mobile ordering and delivery services to keep up with competitors such as Starbucks and Chipotle Mexican Grill, the additional payment function speaks to its desire to make …

Japanese mobile operator SoftBank has announced that it intends to invest $1 billion into South Korea’s largest mobile commerce firm, Coupang. This would represent the largest Internet investment that has been made in South Korea’s history and will provide Coupang with the financial support it needs to compete with other mobile commerce organizations. SoftBank has not disclosed the size of the interest it will acquire in Coupang and the South Korean company will continue to operate of its own accord. In 2013, SoftBank successfully acquired Sprint, which may have been the company’s first step toward expanding beyond Japan. The latest investment …

Millennial women use technology to be more productive in their everyday lives, adopting the latest Web sites and applications early on and quickly adapting to changing methods of communication, according to research from Refinery29. There is plenty of media hype speculating that members of the millennial generation are obsessed with technology, unable to turn away from their devices as they become increasingly isolated from the real world. New research, presented by Refinery29 at Her Brain On Digital on June 3, however, suggests that while millennial women are certainly using technology at high rates, most feel they are able to improve …

Retailers underestimate how much digital technology influences physical shopping experiences, but their expectations are rapidly catching up to reality. According to a new study from RSR Research, “Commerce Convergence: Closing the Gap between Consumer and Brand,” while 84% of retailers surveyed say a digital presence is very important to build brand awareness, but only 64% say it is very important to drive traffic to stores. However, retailers do show an understanding that having disparate digital and brick-and-mortar systems produces negative results. For example, 77% of respondents strongly agree or agree that their legacy POS system is holding them back from providing …

Photo-printing service Mixbook avoids abandonment rates with a new solution that calculates how to best engage consumers through mobile optimization. Its mobile application Mosaic allows users to create a photobook and other photo print projects through any device and social media account. However, the brand was seeing significant dropout rates through mobile, especially during the checkout process and created an experiment to combat these issues.

The National Basketball Association has teamed up with sports merchandise retailer Fanatics to open a new flagship store in New York and equip associates with mobile devices to ramp up in-store sales. The two brands’ multiyear partnership is kicking off with the new NBA flagship store, planned to open its doors on Fifth Avenue just before this year’s holiday season. The NBA is following in a number of retailers’ footsteps by leveraging in-store mobile devices to ensure that consumers are able to order any piece of inventory on the spot in the preferred style, color or size, a tactic which …

A new report from Frost & Sullivan finds that sales of RFID readers, tags and software to the retail sector will grow from $738 million in 2014 to $5.409 billion in 2020, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38.9 percent. When Ram Ravi, a Frost & Sullivan electronics and security industry analyst, met with RFIDvendors at the RFID Journal LIVE! 2014 event in Orlando, Fla., he noticed that their confidence level had changed in comparison with previous conversations he had had with them. Both hardware and software companies indicated that the "tipping point" had been reached at which RFID technology use became commonplace for retailers. Ravi also carried out …

The m-commerce market in China has seen a tremendous growth throughout the first quarter of this year, according to the figures that have been released in a report by a company called iResearch, which is based in Beijing. This brought the Chinese m-commerce market up to an estimated $59 billion. The growth rate in that market was tremendously greater than the overall mobile shopping increase seen globally, which was a very healthy 45 percent. The iResearch figures were based on measurements of the gross merchandise volumes (GMV). The prediction that was made based on the data is that there will have been a continued …

Sprint, Kevin Harrington and Tommy Hilfiger are taking advantage of celebrity-obsessed consumers with a new mobile shopping application that encourages users to shop items celebs are wearing. StarShop is a new mobile app that allows users access to celebrity-favorite products, deals, tips, exclusive merchandise and video content, to leverage consumer interest in fame to drive product sales. The shopping app acts as a virtual mall, while using celebrity content, attempting to gain an advantage on the numerous other mcommerce apps available.