Despite stumbles from various mobile payments providers, the activity of using mobile to pay for things online continues to rise around the world. Online payments using mobile now account for more than a quarter (27%) of all online payments, according to a new index. And the way money is moving is changing as well, with the $28 average transaction value of digital goods bought by tablet passing desktop purchases for the first time since 2013, according to the Adyen quarterly mobile payments index.

The highly touted mobile payments venture of the major retailers has lost its leader. It also may be losing some of its stores as Apple Pay kicks into high gear. The Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) just announced that CEO Dekkers Davidson is leaving MCX "to pursue other opportunities." This comes on the heels of Best Buy announcing that it plans to start accepting Apple Pay.

The mobile march on retail continues with yet another indicator of the impact by various measures. In the first three months of this year, mobile accounted for 41% of total traffic and 26% of total revenue, according to a new market data tabulation. The add-to-cart ratio for mobile devices was 9%, a decrease of 9% from a year ago, based on a data tracking study being released later this week.

The technology is getting ready for a virtual onslaught of new commerce behaviors which are now aligning in the marketplace. As I visited various malls, retailers and merchant locations over the weekend, it struck me that the promise of the transformation of commerce is just around the corner. Due to new rules that retailers who do not deploy EMV terminals by the end of this year will assume fraud liability, new point of sales terminals have been popping everywhere.

Some online retailers are feeling good about their revenue prospects this year while others are looking over their shoulder fearing new market entrants. While we see and write about many commerce-related studies, a new one focused only on relatively smaller, online retailers. The majority (75%) of these retailers have a positive outlook on retail in 2015 with most (72%) expecting their online revenue to increase by 17 percent, according to a new study.

After a year of trials and experiments, beaconing is not only getting serious but also expanding into new territories. The money also is following the market, as can be expected. Some recent research from the IHL Group, exclusively reported here last week (37% of Large Retailers to Deploy Beacons This Year), projected significant beaconing growth, especially among large retailers. And now comes additional investment dollars to fuel some of that growth.

Overall, shopping apps have the highest penetration in the U.S. and Amazon's Android dominance does not extend as much outside. A new international study of Android smartphone activity, conducted by mobile measurement firm Informate, found that smartphone users from the U.S. spend the most time on shopping apps, followed by India.

When it comes to spending money for mobile gaming, a lot of the money can come from a relative few. In games where revenue can be derived from in-app purchasing, not all paying players are created equal, based on a new report. It turns out that the majority (64%) of revenue comes from the top 10% of those who pay, according to the Monetization Report by Swrve, which analyzed tens of millions of users and their associated gaming activities during a one-month period.

While projections of the scope of the mobile commerce market are huge by any measure, the addition of millions of connected devices promises to dramatically increase the actual dollar value into the trillions. Over the next decade, the Internet of Things (IoT) will generate $8 trillion in value, according to a new report.

Many large and small retailers plan to deploy beacons this year but those in the middle, not so much. Comprehensive research around beacon deployment has been somewhat scarce in the market to date. We know beacon deployment at retail last year was hardly a blockbuster, although there were countless experiments and trials going on, some relatively large in scope. The same is still true today, despite a few large-scale deployment announcements.