Which brings me to my 2012 predictions for Facebook, e-commerce, location and social networks, the four areas I've been watching closely since I joined the rad team at ReadWriteWeb this past October. Come along to the next page!

In the context of the 2011 social network battle of 2011, Facebook lost in the Identity category (you can't use pseudonyms on Facebook). In the Sharing category, however, Facebook came out as the obvious winner.

At the f8 developers' conference this past September, Facebook announced the launch of new Timeline profiles, frictionless sharing, Spotify integration and its vision for Facebook's Open Graph platform. A few months after f8, Facebook hired the engineers and developers behind Gowalla. (As a result, Gowalla will shut down.)

What Will Happen In 2012? In short: A lot. Facebook is aggressively hiring and is expected to go public in 2012 with a ridiculously high $100 billion valuation. I predict that frictionless sharing will continue to ramp up, especially in the areas of news and video-sharing. With the expert Gowalla engineers and designers onboard, I can see Facebook tweaking its Timeline so it's better at actually telling stories rather than just presenting people with a ton of visual information. The news feed will probably become more customizable and personalized, giving users some of the control they demand. I think Facebook will converge its UIs into a single platform, and everything will be optimized for mobile. In fact, mobile will be Facebook's number one focus. The long-rumored Facebook phone will finally come out, but it will bomb. By the end of 2012, I predict that Facebook will hit the 1 billion user mark.

E-Commerce

In 2012, I predict that Groupon and LivingSocial will scale back on employees. Then it will increase the frequency and personalization of its deals. In fact, I predict that personalization and time-limited, location-based deals will be key for the future of daily deals.

Social networking-turned-flash sale sites like Fab.com will continue to grow.

The Facebook-EBay integration will be Facebook's last attempt at f-commerce before it finally gives up.

Digital customer loyalty programs like Belly will grow as merchants realize that they need a way to keep their customers coming back. In 2012, I predict that mobile commerce and couch commerce will explode.

Next page: What Will Happen To Location and Social Networks in 2012?

Location

Social Networks

I predict that Facebook, Google+ and Twitter will grow and thrive in 2012. Pinterest, a relative newcomer to the social network game (it actually bills itself as a social bookmarking site) will also keep expand. I also predict that we'll start seeing more visually focused, tablet-friendly user interfaces like Delicious'. People will increasingly access social networks from their mobile devices and tablets.

What do you think will happen in 2012? Do you agree or disagree with my predictions? Let me know in the comments below.

These questions have to be answered before we even get to choosing what to buy. They all make shopping easier, though, whether through giving us more information before we buy or by speeding up the process. Here are three kinds of Web-powered innovations that will contribute to the future of shopping.

These weird-looking Web links are everywhere, showing up on signs, ads and products. Anyone with a smartphone can scan them and be taken straight to a website. They're still mostly used for traditional advertising, but their use by consumers is on the rise. 5% of U.S. adults use QR codes, up from 1% just last year.

More importantly, business are starting to use them in more innovative ways. Some retailers have even built applications that use QR codes directly for purchasing, and many at least let shoppers get additional information about a product in the store. There are some drawbacks, though.

There has been at least one instance of malicious code in QR codes. Plus, some consumers just find them downright ugly and unappealing. It's a new technology, so there's bound to be differences in opinion. With the right strategy, though, some retailers are using QR codes to help willing shoppers.

Augmented Reality

Amazon, always on the front lines of Web-powered retail, launched an iPhone app called Flow this month that exemplifies the sci-fi dream of augmented Reality. Using the phone's camera, it instantly recognizes products for sale and takes shoppers straight to more info about it from Amazon.com.

That includes reviews from other consumers, as well as Amazon's price. Of course, it also gives shoppers the option to buy from Amazon instead of the store, if the price is right, which it is likely to be.

This rubs some business owners the wrong way, because it gives Amazon a last-minute chance to swipe the sale. But it does empower consumers with more information. Not all items are available on Amazon, of course, but many common items are. In the future of shopping, AR shopping apps will definitely be part of the mix.

Mobile Payments & NFC

Near-field communications technology will be the other half of shopping from your smartphone. Using built-in components, NFC allows handsets to securely communicate payments with terminals at the register, so you don't even need to carry a wallet.

It's early yet, but Google is pushing the field forward with its launch of Google Wallet in a few select Android phones. However, more phones are on the way, and major payment processors like PayPal are getting in on the technology. Not to be outdone, the next iPhone is expected to have NFC capability as well.

On the other side of the mobile payments sphere is Square, which provides a little white dongle for processing peer-to-peer credit card payments, as well as an interesting point of sale for retailers. What could a future-facing retailer like Walmart do with technology like that?

Make sure to follow Dan Rowinski's series, What's In Your Mobile Wallet?, to stay on top of the latest mobile payment trends.

In essence, these first 11,000 local libraries just became a chain of local bookstores for Amazon's catalog of virtual books.

It's an extension of the lending library idea we wrote about earlier.

Kindle users will be able to sync a borrowed book's margin notes with Facebook or Twitter for a little literary graffiti.

"Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no," says Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle. "But we're fixing this by extending our Whispersync technology to library books, so your notes, highlights and bookmarks are always backed up and available the next time you check out the book or if you decide to buy the book."

Customers use a local library's website to search for and select a book to borrow. Once they choose a book, customers can choose to "Send to Kindle" and will be redirected to Amazon.com to login to their Amazon.com account and the book will be delivered to the device they select via Wi-Fi, or can be transferred via USB, the company said in an announcement.

Customers can check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any generation Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry or Windows Phone, as well as in their web browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.

To start checking out Kindle library books, device owners can visit their local library's website, or for more information, they can visit a page Amazon has set up for library lending.

You met someone and thought it would turn into a great relationship, only to be disappointed later on by the harsh reality that they just are not that into you. Well, for a few yuan (eight yuan roughly equals a dollar), you can hire someone to be the emissary for this hardest of all social missives.

According to this China blog, people calling themselves "break-up agents" are getting everything from stock trading software to enough money to buy a few iPads just to tell someone they don't know that someone else they don't know doesn't really want to know them anymore, "in that way."

Here's one example from the report: one of the guys that Shenzhen News interviews says that he got the idea from watching a Korean movie about the same kind of practice. On a recent sortie, he was paid about US$15 by a Chinese man to send a message of heartfelt breaking up to a young woman. When the break-up agent arrived at the door of the young woman, she handed him about $80 to do the same thing.

She said that it was she, not he, who wanted to do the breaking up.

The freelancing post sounds pretty lucrative, if not a little dangerous. Another source is quoted as saying that sometimes medical treatment is needed when the boyfriend receiving the message blames the bearer of the news.

Image courtesy of Lifehack.org

Executives of the Chicago-based daily deals company, which is planning an IPO at some point, say changes are part of a shift in strategy and that that the company will now concentrate on middle-tier and upper-tier cities rather than the smaller cities in more distance reaches of the country.

This is not the first time Groupon has tripped up in the world's largest consumer market. Remember Chinese bloggers' response to that offensive Super Bowl ad? Yeah. Read some of the Chinese responses in that link.

All this being said, Groupon may be wise to backtrack and focus on the low-hanging fruit. It may have seemed like easy cherry-picking in the lesser developed markets, but it seems they went into it too fast, before the market had a need to be ready for daily deals.

According to reports, Groupon invested $8.6 million for a 40% stake in the GaoPeng joint venture in January. Chinese social networking behemoth Tencent Holdings Ltd. and private-equity firm Yunfeng Capital are principal investors in the strategy.

It does seem that Groupon can't catch a break in the US, either. The company faces a lawsuit from a group of employees who claim that the company failed to pay them overtime.

Using the computer's webcam and Zugara's AR e-commerce software dubbed "Webcam Social Shopper," shoppers can immediately see what clothes look like on them and can ask friends for an opinion via Facebook and Twitter.

Using the computer's webcam, visitors to Banana Flame's website can instantly try on any of the clothing items it sells. To start the process, you have to step a few feet back from the computer, making sure the camera can see your face. The garment will then automatically position itself on top of what you're currently wearing. Using Kinect-like motions, you can then touch virtual buttons to make minor adjustments to the garment's position on your body. In fact, the technology seems similar to a Kinect hack that does basically the same thing.

You can also swipe your arm to navigate between the controls provided in the software. These controls let you change the garment's color, move it around or take a photo of you "wearing" the item. You can then immediately share that photo with friends via Facebook and Twitter using the software or download it to your computer.

In theory, the system sounds great, but in practice, it still needs some work. For example, it was completely frozen when we tried to use it on our Mac (in both Safari and Chrome), but worked well on our Windows PC (in IE). This appears to be related to the software's use of Adobe Flash - the Mac webcam is not set by default to work with Flash. There's a workaround for this, but an average user wouldn't know to try it. And the website doesn't offer instructions.

Also, we have to admit, using AR in this way is not anything like actually trying on clothes.

But it's a start. And not just a start at using AR for virtual shopping purposes, but a start for AR to be used for anything that's not some gimmicky marketing push, like AR-enabled posters or sports tickets. For that, we're grateful.

Credit card fraud is a big problem, explains Jumio founder and CEO Daniel Mattes, "it's 200 hundred billion per year in the U.S. alone," he says. Yes, that's per year.

When conducting business online, the fraud risk is even greater because merchants are dealing with "card not present" transactions - meaning transactions where a physical card has not been swiped in a reader. When merchants process these fraudulent transactions, they end up dealing with chargebacks and lost revenue.

For consumers, the processes the merchants put in place to help prevent online purchase fraud are often a hassle -  creating a username and password on the site, filling out long forms filled with personal information, and entering in the CVV code from the back of the card. The frustration of this lenghty process can lead to lost sales. Jumio says that Netswipe can help here too. It conducted a focus group study which found that customers using its solution were more likely to complete their online transactions (79% with Netswipe vs. 48% without).

But Jumio doesn't want to just improve churn rates for merchants, it aims to disrupt the entire payments system by providing a seamless, one-stop solution for both merchants and developers alike.

The Technology

Using computer vision technology, the software analyzes five frames of the webcam's video stream to "see" the credit card. It does not take a picture or store the card information on your computer. The process of reading the card is brief - only 250 milleseconds. Jumio's technology then verifies and processes the transaction.

The computer vision technology is highly accurate, too. Only 1 out of 1 million transactions are misread, thanks to the advanced system used behind the scenes. Over the course of a year and a half, Jumio seeded its network with data samples in order to train it. Now, the entire system is fully automated. The company's staff uses a 24/7 monitoring tool to track potential fraud, but are not involved in the actual transactions. It's the software that knows if you're holding up a real credit card or a piece of paper.

On Mobile: An App for Merchants, A Library for Developers

But the solution Jumio designed is not intended only for online shopping. There's a two-part mobile platform, too, launching later this year.

Mobile App

The first part will be a cashier solution, similar to Square, the popular dongle that attaches to an iPhone or Android, allowing individuals and small business owners to accept swiped transactions. Like Square, there will also be a mobile application, just no dongle. Instead, customers will hold up their credit card in front of the phone's camera.

Developer Library

A second part to the mobile solution is a library that will allow developers the ability to integrate Netswipe technology into their mobile applications. This piece of Jumio's solution is the one that's most similar to Card.io, which offers SDKs for mobile developers.

The big difference between what Card.io provides and Netswipe is that Card.io still requires that developers use their own merchant accounts - it only does the computer vision portion. Essentially, it's an easier way to fill in the forms.

Although Card.io may add merchant partners in the future, it does not yet offer those today. Meanwhile, Jumio is providing the complete solution - not just the scanning interface, but the authorization, processing and fraud prevention. "The advantage for mobile developers," says Mattes, "is that mobile apps don't have be PCI-certified." (Payment Card Industry Security Standard, required for any business that processes credit card transactions.) Instead, developers simply add Jumio's library to their app in order to start taking payments. And it can work alongside other solutions, too.

As Cheap as Square

The cost of using Jumio's system is affordable - just 2.75% per swipe for small and micro transactions, the same as Square. Also like Square, there are no other hidden fees or monthly charges. However, for larger organizations, the rate may be higher.  Mattes says it will vary between merchant types and country.

Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin is Lead Investor

Jumio's core team, including its CEO, comes from the Internet telephony startup Jaja. It also has an impressive list of investors, including Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who's a member of Jumio's board and who previously led a Series A funding round of $6.5 Million. The advisory board also includes Zain Khan, a former Google exec, Mark Britto, former Amazon executive, Thomas Jungreithmeir, managing director of TJP and Bjorn Evers, a former gaming industry CEO.

More info is available now on Jumio.com.

Until now, credit card accounts and personal information have been stored in centralized, online databases, making them vulnerable to attacks. With the new cloudKey system, which uses standard encryption technology and a "distributed key" topology, appMobi aims to deliver a more secure solution.

With cloudKey, customers' private data is stored using 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), which is the NSA-approved data encryption standard. It also uses a "distributed key" topology, which means that the appMobi servers don't house the private data themselves, only decryption keys. These keys on their own are worthless - a hacker would still need to get hold of a user's device in order to obtain the credit card data.

Even then, doing so would be difficult. The data on the device is encrypted, too, and hackers would have to crack a password to get access to that information. Even if a hacker was able to break through all these barriers, the payoff would be minimal - perhaps just one credit card number. For most hackers, that would represent too much work for too little reward.

cloudKey Technology

The new cloudKey e-commerce system easily integrates with payment gateways from PayPal, Authorize.net and even direct carrier billing. It has been tested in all major browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Opera, IE 6+ and Safari, and works both online or on mobile.

The system's technology does not require specialized hardware, either, which makes it different than point-of-sale focused payment systems that use NFC, for example. With NFC, devices have to come equipped with secure storage - a special on-device hardware storage area where credit card information and other private data is saved. Although appMobi's system is not competitive with NFC, as it's designed for online and mobile purchases, not physical ones taking place at a cash register, it is possible that parts of this system could be used to enable a secure storage area of sorts on NFC-equipped phones that lack the necessary hardware, like Nokia's C7 and N9. These new Nokia devices, it's been discovered, are not capable of supporting mobile payments or mobile wallets, for that very reason.

Where to Get It

The cloudKey technology will be immediately integrated into appMobi's 1Touch payment system, for use by mobile and Web developers. It will be free for 30 days, and afterwards, there will be a flat rate of 10 cents per transaction.

Some of the biggest gaps between customer demand and the current offerings included the following:

• 23% of consumers download a branded shopping application, 50% plan to do it the future, but only 12% of retailers offer one.
• 54% of consumers want barcodes and smart tags in magazines to link to store catalogs or websites, but only 12% of retailers offer this feature, too.
• 62% of consumers want to shop using mobile apps or websites, but only 32% of retailers offer this option.
• 38% of consumers want to check product availability using their mobile phone, and 52% expect to do it in the future, but only 29% of retailers provide this option now.
• 51% of consumers want to add items to their carts via mobile phones and then complete the transaction later using a PC or tablet, but only 23% of retailers allow this now.

It's interesting to compare these shortcomings with additional data from Forrester's latest Mobile Commerce Forecast, which found that only 2% of retailers' Web sales will come from mobile devices in 2011. Mobile commerce, says the research firm's analyst Suchartia Mulpuru, will remain a small portion of a retailers' business. Although mobile commerce is expected to grown 40% each year for the next 5 years, it will only reach 7% of Web sales penetration by 2016, she notes.

This is due to a number of factors, explains Mulpuru, one being that tablets (which Forrester doesn't include in its definition of mobile) are preferred over smartphones for online commerce because of their larger screens. Also, shopping as an activity has never been one of the more popular Web behaviors, always ranking below things like "reading news" or "using social networks." Finally, consumers often use the Web and mobiles to do product research or compare prices, but complete transactions in a physical store.

That doesn't mean that mobile has no role to play in the mobile commerce revolution, however. Mobile commerce will "transform retail," Mulpuru says, because it empowers customers and makes pricing much more transparent. Big box stores will be forced to become much better merchants, Mulpuru concludes, "or die."

If you haven't yet heard of Dwolla, you should know that this company has no plans to be a minor player in the payments space. Its vision for a payments network is based on the idea that consumers should get to dictate how their payments network operates, not third-parties, says CEO and co-founder Ben Milne. And cash, not credit cards, is Dwolla's inroad to its planned disruption. "Cash," says Milne, "is a poorly represented market in electronic payments."

With Dwolla, the payment network is devoid of personal information - the same information that's the current source of $8.6 billion in credit card fraud annually here in the U.S. “If Visa could blow up their current payment model and start over today, would they build a network that forces consumers to expose critical financial data in order to buy a bagel?," asks Milne, in describing how Dwolla is different.

Like Facebook Connect for Payments

Instead, that personal information is held within Dwolla's walls. When a third-party chooses to integrate Dwolla into their application, a familiar-looking dialog box appears. Much like how Facebook Connect asks you if an app can access your Profile information or your Friends List, Dwolla's permission box asks you if the app can access your balance summary or your transaction details, among other things.

For example, if a service like Mint.com was going to use Dwolla, it may only need access to your transaction history. If a marketplace where you buy and sell things integrates Dwolla, it would need permission to send money.

Also like Facebook, consumers can go in later and revoke an app's access to their personal data.

Disruption: Electronic Cash, Cheaper than PayPal, Works over Facebook & Twitter

To make these cash-based payments possible, Dwolla has partnerships with The Veridian Group, a subsidiary of Veridian Credit Union, in Waterloo, Iowa, and The Members Group (TMG) another financial and credit union service organization owned by Iowa credit unions and their members. Through these organizations', which hold the funds in Dwolla's users' accounts, people can send and receive money from their own bank accounts for a flat 25-cents per transaction, regardless of the transaction amount. That's lower than PayPal's 30-cents per transaction fee. Plus, there's no additional percentage amount per transaction, even though PayPal currently charges an additional 2.9%.

For consumers, these cash-based payments can be shared with social networking friends on sites like Facebook and Twitter. To use Dwolla, you simply register for an account, add your friends from your social networks, then click over to a "Send Money" section on the Dwolla site to send a friend some cash. The friend is alerted to the transaction by way of a direct message on Twitter or Facebook wall post.

Businesses, including those operating online and brick-and-mortar retailers, wanting an alternative to PayPal can also use the service, which is now poised for integration into more applications and platforms through the new Grid API, which allows for this integration into third-party platforms. Because Dwolla uses standard Oauth technology, the number of platforms which could easily integrate its service include everything from mobile apps to banking platforms and more.

Square, Google Wallet & Others Could be Partners, Not Competition

As for other disruptive payment startups and services like Square, the credit card swiping dongle for mobile devices, Zaarly, the hot, new location-based, real-time mobile marketplace, and Google Wallet (Google's wireless mobile payment service), Dwolla doesn't see these as competition, but future partners. Dwolla could be integrated into Google's Wallet app as the "cash" option, for example. It's already in talks with Zaarly, too, with a deal expected.

And Dwolla has more up its sleeves, too. The company is working on other "unique solutions" alongside the Federal Reserve, which it won't say much about at this point, only that "they will weigh heavily on user experiences and transactions." Going forward, Dwolla also has its eye on the burgeoning couponing market, especially the local deals services which these days includes companies like Groupon, Living Social, Foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Offers and others. Says Milne, Dwolla will get more involved in this market over the next year.

In the meantime, the company is focused on spreading the word about Grid as well as FiSync, a service that allows banks to offer Dwolla to their customers directly, without the need for pre-loaded Dwolla accounts held elsewhere.

Anyone interested in trying Dwolla for themselves can do so here. Businesses can learn more here.

When making a purchase on the Web, this new system offers a click-to-purchase functionality that does away with the long, tedious form filling currently necessary on the websites belonging to online merchants. Instead, a username and password will be all that's required to complete a purchase. Offline at retailers' locations, the mobile wallet will support the use of promo codes sent via SMS, barcode scanning and NFC technology, the latter which allows a customer to pay with a wave of their phone instead of with a swipe of a plastic card.

Visa introduced the magnetic stripe over 30 years ago, but now, that technology's time is coming to an end. There is a global movement underway involving the digitization of cash and checks, explains Jennifer Schulz, Head of Global Product Strategy Innovation & eCommerce at Visa. This mobile-driven force of change has come about due to the widespread ubiquity of mobile devices, and it has impacted the way merchants and retailers interact with each other.

While the mobile stripe has allowed for a convenience that consumers now take for granted, we now have the technology to replace it with something even better: a digital wallet.

The system that Visa is launching, includes three key pieces: an e-commerce offering, an m-commerce offering and an offline piece for point-of-sale transactions.

Online Shopping Revolution: No More Forms to Fill

Online shopping, whether done via a desktop computer or a mobile phone, will see the most radical impact in the short term. Currently, consumers wishing to make online purchases have to fill out long forms at each retailer's website in order to complete their transaction. In addition to filling out name and address (both billing and shipping), they also need to fill in their credit card number, expiration date and their card security code.

No longer will that be necessary.

In Visa's new system, the customer replicates their wallet online during a one-time setup and can then simply use a username and password to complete their transactions. The benefit to the consumer, obviously, is ease-of-use, but for the merchant, the benefit (besides these easier transactions for customers, of course) is that they'll no longer have to store customers' credit card information on their own servers. With Visa's digital wallet, the company is offering a global "card-on-file" system which retailers can tap into, leaving much of the security up to Visa.

What's NFC & How Will It Be Used at POS?

Offline, at the point-of-sale, the platform will take advantage of NFC technology. NFC, short for near field wireless communication, allows users to tap or wave their phone at an NFC-enabled terminal in order to pay for a transaction. NFC is now being built into modern smartphones including Google's Nexus S, Samsung's Galaxy II, Nokia's Astound and the BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930 devices, among others. Visa also offers cases and SD cards for non-NFC phones, in order to offer backwards compatibility to older devices. While still an emerging technology, it's expected that NFC will ultimately play a large role in the future of commerce.

Currently, there are 150,000 retailers in the U.S. with readers that accept NFC transactions, including big names like McDonald's, CVS and Foot Locker, to name a few. These readers, in some cases, may be branded as supporting Visa's PayWave, but any contactless reader will accept these sorts of tap-to-pay transactions thanks to the global standard agreed upon by the payments industry.

While the penetration of a large number of NFC terminals is still 3 to 5 years away, says Schulz, the environment is ramping up to embrace the technology more fully.

In the meantime, non-NFC equipped merchants can instead use Visa's platform to send promotions to customers via SMS technology, email or barcoded mobile coupons, which could then be shown to the merchant at the point-of-sale, or even printed out, if necessary. A recent example of this system launched in April in partnership with clothing retailer The Gap. The store offers real-time, location-based discounts to customers over SMS. The system knows when a customer is out shopping and where, thanks to the real-time processing capabilities of Visa's payment network. Those consumers are then sent an over-the-air mobile coupon for use at The Gap via text message.

Schulz, in describing the platform, wanted to make it clear that this sort of technology is opt-in only. "The consumer is at the center of the product," she explained. "They have to opt-in to any rewards, discounts, offers or other value-added features a merchant offers."

But Visa's digital wallet goes even further than that in its consumer-focused capabilities. Users can also access online controls that allow them to configure which cards are used for different types of transactions. For example, everyday purchases could be set to use your debit card by default, but travel-related purchases, like buying online airline tickets or paying hotel bills, for example, could be automatically configured to use your credit card.

Banks On Board

Financial institutions can also use the wallet to dole out rewards points and other offers to consumers as well. At present, Visa announced that it's working with the following financial institutions and organizations, with more to come: Barclaycard U.S., BB&T, Card Services for Credit Unions, ICBA Bancard, First Financial Bank of Ohio, Nordstrom fsb, Pentagon Federal Credit Union, PNC Bank, PSCU Financial Services, Regions Bank, Royal Bank of Canada, Scotiabank, TD Bank Group (U.S. and Canada) and U.S. Bank.

We also know that Visa was trialing its NFC-based PayWave service with Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, too, so we would not be surprised to find those institutions on the list in the near future.

Launch Time Frame

The digital wallet platform will launch in the U.S. and Canada first, in fall 2011. It will then expand elsewhere in the world in the coming months. Also an important aspect to Visa's global ambitions is addressing the needs of emerging markets. Visa will work with financial institutions to serve the banked, under-banked and "bankless" customers in those regions. Here, a scaled-down version of the digital wallet will be present, allowing for transactions over SMS or through applications used on the SIM card, as made available through partners.

On modern smartphones, all the major mobile operating systems will be supported. "If consumers are using it, we'll make it available to them," Schulz says. On these platforms, mobile transactions, NFC and even digital, mobile coupons will be available.

There has been much talk about digital wallets and, specifically, mobile wallets in recent days, with everyone from Google to Apple and even the mobile operators themselves having been pegged as being involved in building a consumer-facing platform, in some form or another. Visa, however, will be one of the first to actually launch a system to end users, from what we know as of today. That, plus their brand name recognition and the openness of the platform itself, may give them the advantage in the race to become your mobile wallet of choice.

If you look at that number in terms of Americans who say they're Internet users, that figure rises to 78% who research online before buying.

And it isn't simply the number of Americans doing online research that's grown. It's the frequency with which we're doing it. On any given day, 21% of adults are conducting this sort of research, up from 9% in 2004.

In addition to reading about products and services online, more people are contributing reviews and sharing their opinions about products and services, particularly via social networks. 24% of American adults say they've posted comments about a purchase they've made.

The Pew study also looked at Americans' e-commerce spending habits, in addition to their research habits. It found, not surprisingly, that the percentage of Americans purchasing products online rose from 36% in May 2000 to 52% in this 2010 survey. And the percentage making travel reservations for airline tickets or hotel rooms rose from 22% to 52% over the same time period.

The study found little difference between men and women's online research habits, but did find that those in higher income brackets do more online research than those in lower income brackets. Those in higher income brackets and with more education also post reviews and comments more frequently.

"Many Americans begin their purchasing experience by doing online research to compare prices, quality, and the reviews of other shoppers," says Jim Jansen, Senior Fellow at the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. "Even if they end up making their purchase in a store, they start their fact-finding and decision-making on the internet."

"These enhancements to Checkout by Amazon reflect the feedback we've received from merchants who want to offer Amazon.com customers the convenience of using their account information with a more streamlined buying experience," said Baris Cetinok, general manager of Amazon Payments.

Merchants will be pleased with the deeper site integration now found in Checkout, and customers should be excited that making purchases with their Amazon account on third-party sites its faster and more streamlined. Competitors like PayPal and Google Checkout have allowed customers to buy directly from merchant sites with embeddable tools for over a year. Amazon fans should be glad to see their horse get back in the race and become a more viable option for hosted e-commerce payments.

Amazon has been continually working to improve Checkout, including last year's introduction of PayPhrase, which sped up payments by allowing users to enter a phrase and a PIN to quickly purchase items. The upgrades to Checkout come at an opportune time for Amazon as retailers prepare for another busy holiday shopping season.

Like Square, the new solution allows you to physically swipe credit cards while processing the transaction over an Internet-connected iPhone. But isn't toting around a physical plastic card soon going to be a thing of the past? Maybe, as makers of other new mobile payment solutions, including "contactless" technology and money-transfer apps, would have you believe. Then again, maybe not.

The Intuit solution offers a flat rate of $12.95 a month, plus 1.7-3.7% of each transaction and an additional $.30-$.40 per transaction fee. Square, on the other hand, will charge 2.75% plus a $.15-per-transaction fee. Intuit's biggest selling point, however, is its lack of long-term contracts.

NFC: Now Available, via a Sticker

Although what Intuit is offering is a brand-name and accessible solution for many small business owners, it may or may not be the next big revolution in mobile payment technology. At least, that's what another startup called Bling Nation hopes.

This company has partnered with another big name: PayPal, to push its "Bling Tag," an NFC-enabled sticker that can be stuck to the back of any mobile phone. (NFC, or "near field communication," is a short-range high frequency wireless communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over about a 4-inch distance.) In this case, the Bling Tag replaces a credit card, and to use it, you only have to tap your phone onto the merchant's "Blinger." The name sounds a little hokey to us, but the idea is solid.

The Blinger is provided to companies for free upon sign up, and set up is simple: You just plug it into an electrical outlet. Also, no integration with a POS system is required.

Processing costs vary depending on the volume of business a company does, but Bling Nation claims merchants could save up to 50% in processing fees, as compared with the large payment processors. Payments are tied to your account at a financial institution, and now, optionally at PayPal. The money is instantly debited from the associated account at the time of purchase.

Unfortunately, the Bling Tags are only available from financial institutions, which have to first sign up to support this technology. That alone will limit adoption, as will the fact that few merchants actually support the thing.

Other NFC News: Apple's Plans and Visa's Case

That may change in time, however, especially if Apple builds NFC tech into its next iPhone, as a new hire by the company - Benjamin Vigier, an expert in the field - seems to suggest.

Plus, the startup Bling Nation is only one example of companies looking towards an NFC-enabled future. This summer, Visa is beginning trials of its contactless payment technology, payWave, integrated into a special protective iPhone case, developed in partnership with DeviceFidelity. Using NFC on the back-end, consumers could simply wave their iPhone in front of a terminal. For what it's worth, the system is already catching on in Canada.

(For more on NFC, see: "NFC: Never Mind Credit Cards, Pay With Your Phone")

Mobile Payment Services, Apps

Then again, it's possible that neither NFC nor hardware attachments represent the future of mobile payments: it could be, simply, an app.

Last fall, we looked at several m-Commerce solutions, including Boku, Zong, Obopay, MasterCard's MoneySend and Nokia Money, to name a few. They aren't household names, at least here in the U.S., for several reasons, including limited availability, issues with usability and small user bases.

Even though big names like Amazon and Google are jumping into the mobile payments game, as well, (the former with a service for in-app and mobile website purchases and the latter with an even geekier solution - a combination of a browser extension and QR code) the technology hasn't yet truly caught on for brick-and-mortar merchant-to-consumer transactions.

Consumer Reports Warns of Mobile Payment Issues

Meanwhile, the respected organization Consumer Reports - the same group whose decision to "not recommend" the iPhone 4 due to antenna issues forced Apple to finally fess up and offer free bumpers - has recently warned consumers of mobile payment dangers.

With what seems to be a dire warning, Consumer Reports issued a press release: "Mobile Payment Systems Could Leave Consumers at Risk." At the crux of the problem with these new technologies, the report claims, are the varying protections for bank errors and unauthorized use. Debit cards only provide protections for bank errors and unauthorized use, not disputes with the merchant. The same goes for transactions where money is automatically deducted from a bank account. And payment services provided by mobile carriers might escape consumer protections entirely, unless a contract specifically provides them.

"Consumers should not be expected to figure out what protections apply to each competing new payments venture," said Michelle Jun, staff attorney for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports. "Now that mobile payment ventures are emerging in the U.S., it's time to harmonize and extend consumer protections for all payment services."

Ironically, this news release's intention is actually to push mobile payment companies to get up to speed with their credit card-swiping counterparts. (Consumers Union called on them to include "full consumer rights provided under existing federal law for both debit and credit cards," it reads. And to provide "true voluntary 'zero liability' assurance for consumers without loopholes.")

But sadly, in an age of headline-only journalism, the news will likely be taken in a more negative light. (As it will by those who have only skimmed this article, reading the section titles, sigh).

Who Will Win?

NFC has seen some success in parts of Europe and Asia, and mobile payments are par for the course in many parts of Africa, where access to banks is limited. But at the end of the day, it's too soon to know how well (or if) these technologies will take off in this part of the world, namely North America, and specifically, the U.S.

One disadvantage many startups have entering this space is brand-name recognition, or rather, the lack thereof. In Intuit's trials, for example, many customers trusted the product because they had heard of the company before. Faced with "Bling" stickers and apps that sound like games ("Boku," "Zong"), there may be adoption issues until there's a brand-name partnership underway.

Like the popular Internet retailer Woot (just bought by Amazon), the app provides deeply discounted items, available in limited quantities for a limited time. At 12 p.m. Eastern (GMT - 4:00) every day, a new deal is posted to the mobile app, offering "door-buster" type savings of 50% or more on brand-name products from a network of over 28,000 merchants.

Some of the past "OO's" (overwhelming offers), as they're called, have included deals like $100 off flights booked via Priceline.com, $50 off anything at TigerDirect.com, $25 off Target merchandise, $100 off Wal-Mart merchandise, $75 off the Barnes & Noble eBook Reader, $50 off digital cameras at Staples, $100 off a Nintendo Wii from Kmart and much more.

How to Play... err... Shop

There's a game-like element to scoring these deals, too. They launch at a given time and sell out fast - sometimes even in seconds, so you have to be quick to win the chance to purchase these items. To get a heads up about what deal is launching when, shoppers can sign up for email alerts that are sent out several hours prior to the OO start time and detail pricing, quantities available and other descriptive info about the product.

And if you're worried that you still might find a better deal by shopping around online, the app has you covered here, too. Instead of purchasing the item immediately from your mobile, you simply "reserve" the item. Of course, to do so, you have to link a MasterCard credit, debit or prepaid card to your account first. You then have up to three days to redeem your reservation.

One important item to note, and a big difference between Woot and this app, is that the discounts you receive are not immediate. Instead, they're provided to you as rebates posted to your MasterCard account. You will actually have to buy the item at full price then wait, usually around two weeks, before the credit is posted. At most, according to the FAQ, this process may take up to 21 days.

MasterCard and M-Commerce

MasterCard seems intent on tapping into the growing m-commerce trend, potentially a $2.2 billion dollar industry by the end of this year according to ABI Research. The Marketplace app is just one of many the company has launched for the device in recent months. It also has MoneySend, a person-to-person mobile payments application, Easy Savings Program, an app that locates nearby discounts from participating merchants, Priceless Picks, an app that lets shoppers share great deals with each other anywhere around the world and an ATM finder application. Unfortunately for Android users, the only app MasterCard has ported to that platform is its one-off app, "Flavours of Shanghai 2010," designed specifically for EXPO 2010.