Procter & Gamble and Mobeam have announced a partnership to bring the "first-ever fully mobile couponing system to market. The innovation, created by Mobeam of California, makes electronic coupons presented on a phone or other mobile device scannable, so shoppers need only their phones/handhelds, not a stack of coupons, at check out."

"Simply providing consumers with the convenience and functionality of mobile wallet technology will not be sufficient to drive mass-market adoption", according to Mobey Forum. In a recently announced white paper entitled 'Mobile Wallet – Definition and Vision’, the bank-led industry association argues that it will take a lot more than just contactless payment card emulation to drive consumer use of mobile wallets.

NCR has announced that it has entered into a strategic agreement to integrate Sparkfly’s mobile marketing platform with Radiant point-of-sale software, including Aloha.

“While many mobile commerce and digital promotions companies are entering the market, the true value for our customers is the integration of these platforms with point-of-sale transactional data,” says Andy Heyman, senior vice president, NCR Hospitality and Specialty Retail. “Sparkfly’s ability to enable personalized mobile promotions makes them an ideal partner to provide businesses with the best tools for building connections with consumers.”

Sparkfly’s digital offer redemption capability provides a unique way to engage individual consumers with targeted promotions based on SKU-level details of their actual purchases.

Over on our sister blog, Payments Views, Glenbrook's Russ Jones takes a look at purchase friction in mobile commerce and wonders if the industry's fascination with mobile coupling isn't missing the point.

In practice, sellers will use any number of tactics to group buyers with different price sensitivities into different categories. Many of these tactics are based on adding friction to the buying process in order to distinguish the price sensitive customer (who will endure the inconvenience to get the better price) from the non-price sensitive customer (who values convenience).

shopkick has announced that, with Citi sponsorship, it will install its small shopkick Signal box for FREE at the first 1,000 selected stores to enable its beneficial walk-in rewards program.

"Our work with shopkick demonstrates one of the ways we are working to drive growth for our clients and for our company," said Christopher Kay, Head of Ventures, Citi Ventures. "We invest in cutting-edge companies and work with them to deliver new experiences for clients designed around their increasingly digital and mobile lives. shopkick is the leading mobile shopping app and drives measurable foot traffic to its retail partners. We're happy to help make that shopper engagement and customer retention available to smaller businesses."

Citi, through its Citi Ventures unit, is an early investor in shopkick.

LSN Mobile and First Data have announced a new mobile offer program that "gives both advertisers and retailers an efficient, cost-effective and trackable mobile marketing solution to boost store traffic."

Branded as “My Mobile Offer,” this first-of-its-kind solution leverages the combined characteristics of Short Message Service (SMS), mobile advertising and traditional marketing and capitalizes on the popularity and increasing usage of personalized offers and discounts. The program allows brands to take full advantage of the power of mobile marketing.

Street Savings has announced two mobile marketing products – Street Savings Mobile Coupons and Mobile Rewards - that "move value using text messaging and popular gift and loyalty programs, and can be redeemed using widely available point of sale (POS) and credit card terminals."

“By tying the mobile transaction to the existing payments terminals, we have solved the problem of mobile coupon and rewards redemption, enabling merchants to track campaign success and move closer to a mobile payments environment,” said Pal Flagg, COO of Street Savings.

First Data has announced a mobile vouchers (mVoucher) capability for merchants looking to "extend their brand and commerce services to their ever-more-mobile customers."

Sometimes referred to as coupons, mVouchers store a prepaid value funded by the merchant or consumer product goods company. Mobile vouchers can be delivered as coupons, loyalty rewards, promotional rewards, contest rewards or general marketing initiatives. The virtual offer can then be used for redemption online or in-store through a mobile device as an SMS (short message service) or 2-D barcode, and ultimately through contactless exchange such as Near Field Communication (NFC).

Yankee Group has announced a new report that indicates while mobile transaction usage is growing, consumers show little willingness to pay for these services.

The company’s forecasts predict unprecedented growth in mobile transactions worldwide, with the total value of global mobile transactions increasing from $162 billion in 2010 to $984 billion in 2014. However, Yankee Group’s consumer survey results show that less than 10 percent of respondents would be willing to pay extra for mobile transaction services such as mobile banking, mobile coupons and mobile payments.

Visa has announced a new mobile app for the iPhone that provides cardholders with access to more than 50 unique merchant offers ranging from clothing and dining to entertainment.

Visa is working with a select list of popular merchants to deliver exclusive offers to Visa account holders, helping them save money on every-day purchases. More than 50 merchants including some of the most popular retailers in the U.S. such as 24 Hour Fitness, Jos. A. Bank, Meineke, New York & Company, and Zales are providing discounts through the Visa Mobile application, helping them reach more consumers with targeted offers.

A global survey by Accenture on mobile devices and shopping shows that "smartphone users would find it useful to download money-off coupons to their phones (79%), and receive instant money-off coupons as they pass by an item in a store (73%). Conversely, fewer than half (48%) of smartphone users have downloaded a coupon from their PCs."

M-Dot Network has announced that Hiller's Markets has "successfully launched the first digital coupon platform that does not rely on any additional in-store infrastructure or hardware within the store headquarters." The new POS Digital Coupon technology from M-Dot provides retailers with an enterprise platform for managing the issuance, precision marketing and real-time redemption of digital coupons and offers.

Mobile phones are becoming so prevalent with consumers today that marketers are increasingly using these devices to send coupons, promotions and loyalty-based offers directly to consumers' phones. The topic of “mobile marketing” and the related privacy and security considerations are addressed in a new white paper recently released from the Smart Card Alliance Payments Council entitled “Chip-Enabled Mobile Marketing”.

A recent study sponsored by Sterling Commerce and Demandware found that consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices to serve their in-store shopping experience, but are concerned about security and ease-of-use.

The independent survey of 3,600 U.S. consumers reveals that 15% of consumers have used their mobile devices to make purchases. While nearly all (96.2%) of consumers surveyed own a mobile phone, just under half owned a smart phone, which are designed to deliver a more optimal shopping experience.

Cardmobili has announced the launch of a free application for consumers that it says "takes advantage of cloud computing infrastructure to unburden consumers from carrying physical loyalty, membership, rewards and association cards and makes them available on their mobile phone. Cardmobili’s smart application aligns merchants and consumers with personalized communication, heightened services and greater control and ease of managing all types of card affiliations and programs through one central device." READ MORE »

Citi Cards has announced a new location-based mobile application called Citi Shopper that delivers "local offers and deals, compares prices, provides maps to nearby retailers, as well as reminds Citi cardmembers of offers and benefits specific to their Citi credit cards." The application was built by GPShopper and is available on the iPhone, Blackberry, Android and via browser.

In addition, Citi is making available MasterCard PayPass stickers that can be affixed to the back of mobile phones for contactless payments - and will also be providing a PayPass locator application to help cardholders find PayPass-accepting merchants. READ MORE »

American Greetings has updated its iPhone application (introduced earlier this year) to include an option for consumers to take advantage of special coupons for paper greetings, redeemable at American Greetings retailers nationwide.

"We have received great feedback from consumers on the iPhone application, and we are excited to bring this successful app to the greeting card aisle," said Dan Miller, vice president of product management and user experience at AmericanGreetings.com. "This is a great example of how American Greetings is continuing to expand our presence for consumers to offer solutions and great value wherever they shop." READ MORE »

In an article in DMNews, Dianna Dilworth reports on JCPenney's pilot program for mobile coupons in the Houston area. Using the coupons presented on their mobile phones, consumers earn discounts on purchases. For its program, JCPenney is using San Jose-based Cellfire to manage the mobile coupon efforts. Cellfire claims they are seeing redemption rates of 10% to 20% for mobile coupons - resulting from much better targeting of offers as compared to traditional paper coupons.

Dilworth also reports that Starbucks is using 2D bar code as well with its new Starbucks Card Mobile iPhone application now in pilot. She says that Starbucks is using technology from Codilink to read the 2D bar codes generated by the application on the iPhone.

A new report from Juniper Research "forecasts that the application of NFC as a mobile retail marketing tool via coupons and smart posters will support the growth of NFC mobile payment transaction values from $8bn in 2009 to $30bn within three years." READ MORE »

Cellfire has announced the expansion of its nationwide digital grocery coupon program to include Safeway, one of the largest grocery providers in the country. According to the company, its digital grocery coupons are now available via mobile phone or computer and redeemable at more than 1,500 Safeway stores nationwide under the banners of Vons, Pavilions, Randalls, Tom Thumb, Dominick's, Genuardi's and Safeway. READ MORE »

Visa has announced that Visa Mobile is now operational on mobile devices powered by Android, the Open Handset Alliance’s open source platform for mobile devices, including the T-Mobile G1 phone. READ MORE »

ReadWriteWeb reports on Visa's new Mobile Application for Google's Android-powered mobile handsets. Visa Mobile delivers three services - Alerts, Offers, and Locator - to help find merchants and Visa ATM's. The Visa mobile website says that it is available now for select Chase Visa cardholders. An FAQ is available. READ MORE »

Visa has announced plans to make mobile payment-related services "broadly available to United States consumers by the end of the year" - including delivery of Visa mobile applications for the Android platform with initially availability for Chase Visa cardholders. READ MORE »

Visa and Nokia have announced plans "to deliver Visa payment and payment-related services – including contactless payments, remote payments, money transfer, alerts and notifications – for Nokia’s next generation handsets beginning with the Nokia 6212 Classic, expected to be available starting October 2008." READ MORE »

In a post titled "1000 Miles To Go For The Enterprise And True Customer Relationships", Christopher Carfi blogs from Oracle's OpenWorld conference this week. Scroll down in his post for highlights of a proof-of-concept demo given during the conference showing how an iPhone mobile application could be used by a retailer (Body Shop) to give more power to the customer. The demo includes the consumer reviewing other customer reviews on a product, being presented with an opportunity to redeem loyalty points at purchase, and generating the discount coupon to be applied at POS.

ViVOtech has announced that its NFC mobile payment wallet, Over-the-Air (OTA) payment, coupon delivery and redemption technologies are being used jointly by NETS, SingTel and United Overseas Bank Ltd. (UOB) for an NFC mobile phone payment trial in Singapore. READ MORE »

Visa has announced it is launching four new programs to deliver payments and services via mobile devices. Two commercial mobile payments programs, in Brazil and Korea, along with two mobile offers and transaction notification pilots in the United States, add to more than a dozen pilot and commercial programs enabled by the Visa mobile platform around the world. READ MORE »

Visa and Chase have announced a consumer pilot to deliver merchant offers directly to the mobile devices of Chase credit and debit cardholders in the Phoenix metropolitan area. According to the two companies, "the offers – from merchant discounts to specials – are tailored to match the personal interests selected by Chase cardholders and will be redeemable at the point of sale or the web site of more than 50 participating merchants." READ MORE »

Thanks Again, a merchant-funded reward network, and RocketBux, a mobile advertising company, have announced a partnership to enable Thanks Again registered consumers and participating merchants to interact via mobile messaging. The partnership will allow consumers to enroll in the Thanks Again Rewarding Merchant Program via mobile phone and receive scannable, barcoded coupons triggered by card transaction data. In addition, Thanks Again will be providing their participating merchant and reward partners the ability to communicate to the consumer base via opt-in mobile messaging. READ MORE »

Cellfire, a nationwide mobile coupon and discount offer service, has introduced Cellfire 3.0, enabling consumers to "mobilize offers they discover in traditional and interactive media" and other new features. READ MORE »