M-Commerce

Apple this week updated its App Store Review Guidelines with a change that signals a loosening of its restrictive policies against bitcoin and other digital currencies. The change now allows apps to "facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with a...

Internet companies are showing no signs of slowing down when it comes to innovation, specifically in the area of physical retail. Smartphones and tablets are the new darlings of e-commerce companies, and they now are being used to provide immersive and entertaining shopping experiences. Many of the...

Google on Monday announced it is rolling out a new feature for Google Now that aims to blend the brick-and-mortar and online retail worlds. Available now for Android phones, the feature notifies users when they're physically near a store that might have a recently searched-for item available. For in...

Alibaba is putting some skin in the mobile-messaging game with a $215 million investment in Tango. Mobile messaging apps are hot. Facebook recently scooped up WhatsApp for $19 billion, and Japanese e-commerce titan Rakuten recently acquired Viber for $900 million. Tango is a cross-platform app -- An...

eBay on Wednesday announced it was leading a $134 million investment in Snapdeal, which claims to be India's largest e-commerce marketplace. eBay's first investment in Snapdeal came in mid-2013, when it poured $50 million into the company. Snapdeal merited additional financing because of its complem...

Twitter on Wednesday announced Q4 2013 revenue of $243 million, up 116 percent year over year, and a 30 percent YoY increase in average monthly active users. Wall Street reacted by sending its share prices down 21 percent, and analysts promptly downgraded the company. That could be because Twitter's...

Facebook has announced a new feature that allows users to donate money to nonprofit organizations through the site, a move designed to help raise both funds and global awareness for the charitable causes. Facebook was inspired to launch the donation feature following last month's successful partners...

Twitter reportedly is testing Nearby, a new timeline feature for its mobile app that displays tweets from people who are geographically close. Both the users viewing the tweets and those tweeting must have their location tagging option enabled for the feature to work. The Nearby service will display...

More than 131 million shoppers -- or 54.8 percent of the shopping population -- are planning to hit the online deals this Cyber Monday. That is one finding of a National Retail Federation survey conducted by Prosper Insights & Analytics over the weekend. For comparison, the corresponding figure ...

For e-commerce companies, the time has finally arrived. After months of extensive preparations, the holidays are here and the top business priority is to drive conversions. Many of these companies have applied valuable lessons from 2012 and previous years by implementing basic Web performance-optimi...

Google on Wednesday introduced the Google Wallet Card, a debit card that gives people instant access to the funds they have stored in Google Wallet. The card works like a traditional debit card, so users can swipe it to pay at a restaurant or store, for instance, or use it to get money from an ATM.

eBay's third-quarter earnings report showed gains in revenue and earnings, but the company's stock dipped on its warning that a weak U.S. economy might lead to lower-than-expected fourth-quarter gains. Revenue was up 14 percent in eBay's third quarter, with the company bringing in $3.9 billion compa...

Google is planning to compensate users for letting it monitor their behavior via a mobile app currently in development. The project is part of Google's Screenwise market research program, which was launched about a year ago, said Google spokesperson Andrea Faville. "We conduct this research with sma...

Much the way PayPal is working to extend its reach into the bricks-and-mortar world, so Amazon.com is looking farther afield across the rest of the Web. The online purveyor this week launched Login and Pay with Amazon, a new program that allows online businesses to set up login and payment credentia...

PayPal on Tuesday announced Payment Code, a new tool that allows customers to pay for in-store purchases by simply presenting a QR code or four-digit number at the cash register. Similar in some ways to PayPal Beacon, which the company rolled out last month, Payment Code is intended both to simplify...