Mobile commerce is about to get more vocal. As in buying things by issuing voice commands. Within three years, 20% of all user interactions with smartphones will take place via virtual personal assistants, according to a new Gartner forecast.

There are mobile payments and then there are mobile payments. Put another way, paying by phone can take more than one way. While in a store, consumers face a number of ways to use their smartphone to pay. These typically would include device-based technology, such as in Apple Pay or Samsung Pay.

There will be plenty of travel this holiday season and many of the people doing that traveling will be leaning on their mobile apps. Holiday travelers will be using their apps pretty much all the way through their trip to make their travel less stressful and more manageable, based on a new study. Apps are going to be used for everything from searching for and booking flights to checking in and letting friends and family know the status, based on the survey.

Mobile payments just can't catch a break. At first, a long lag was created when Apple held off adopting near field communication technology until its later models, when it finally introduced Apple Pay. Then the market had to wait for retailers to purchase and install checkout terminals that could handle mobile payments, both from Apple and Android phones.