As many as 80 percent of U.S. residents support frictionless payment methods and technologies, suggests a survey of 1,000 consumers Viewpost published this week. Among its other findings: Nearly 51 percent of survey participants were paid electronically through direct deposit, and 83 percent of respondents believed paper checks would be eliminated completely within the next 20 years.

Amazon has hailed its third-annual Prime Day promotion as its single biggest global shopping event ever. Held earlier this week, it garnered an estimated $1 billion in sales, surpassing year-ago sales by 60 percent and beating the company's prior Black Friday and Cyber Monday records. More members joined Prime on this year's Prime Day than on any other single day in the company's history.

Amazon's significant expansion into yet another market -- this time, grocery stores -- dominated many of my conversations last week. Clearly, Amazon warned us. I've been here before -- back in the 1990s, when Amazon was just books, I was running the company's e-commerce unit. I got into an argument with one of the analysts focused on Amazon, who believed the company wouldn't go beyond books.

New voices for Siri and peer-to-peer payments are among the new features in the next version of Apple's mobile device operating system iOS 11, previewed at the company's annual Worldwide Development Conference on Monday. "With the new operating system, Apple has doubled down on many of the applications it has developed for iOS," said Ross Rubin, the principal analyst at Reticle Research.

Walmart on Thursday reported soaring e-commerce growth during its fiscal first quarter, along with strong organic sales figures -- results that suggest rival Amazon may have a fight on its hands. Online sales grew a stunning 63 percent during the quarter, perhaps in response to the company's newly introduced free two-day shipping and its upgraded mobile app.

More than 8,600 retail locations will shut down this year, following the 5,077 that closed last year, based on data from Credit Suisse. Moreover, 2017 could surpass 2008 -- the worst year for retail closures on record -- when 6,163 stores shut down operations. However, unlike 2008, when overall consumer spending declined with the onset of a global recession.

Apple stunned the wider development community on Monday with an emailed announcement that it has decided to slash commissions for App Store affiliates from 7 percent to 2.5 percent, starting May 1. The cuts apply to all apps and in-app content, Apple said. However, they do not apply to commissions for movies, music, books and TV, which will remain at 7 percent.

Amazon on Monday unveiled a prototype convenience store called "Amazon Go," which uses mobile e-commerce, machine learning and computer vision to allow customers to make purchases without a cashier. The 1,800 square foot concept store in Seattle uses the company's Just Walk Out technology, which incorporates many of the same concepts found in self-driving cars, Amazon said.

Although online retailers on Monday offered deals to jumpstart the online holiday shopping season, Cyber Monday as a one-day event could be losing some of its attraction. Many retailers jumped the gun, and have been offering special online deals for days. Cyber Monday in recent years has ranked as the third largest holiday shopping day, following Super Saturday and Black Friday.

Shoppers came out in droves over the Black Friday weekend, spending a record $9.36 billion, a 16.4 percent increase from a year ago, according to Adobe Digital Insights. Black Friday sales hit a new record of $3.34 billion, a 21 percent jump from a year ago. This was the first-ever Black Friday with sales exceeding $3 billion. Thanksgiving Day sales were up 11.5 percent from a year ago.

Recent high-profile distributed denial of service attacks on the Internet's infrastructure and an investigative journalist's website have spiked concerns over possible disruptions of traffic during the biggest online shopping weekend of the year. Online spending last year exceeded $5.8 billion on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, according to Adobe, and that figure is expected to go up this year.

Many consumers will rush to shopping malls and give their mobile devices a workout later this week. Fifty-nine percent of the U.S. population, or 137.4 million shoppers, is expected to hunt for bargains over Black Friday weekend, according to new survey from the National Retail Federation. The figures are up slightly from 58.7 percent, or 135.8 million shoppers, a year ago.

Facebook on Monday announced Marketplace, a new mobile app that facilitates buying and selling between peers. Marketplace allows members of a community to discover, buy and sell items, noted Facebook Product Management Director Mary Ku. The service is scheduled for rollout this week in the United States, UK, Australia and New Zealand. Users can access Marketplace by tapping a shopping icon at the bottom of the Facebook mobile app.

It's summer, and Walmart and Amazon are celebrating by escalating their e-commerce competition. Amazon has announced it will hold its second annual Prime Day on July 12. A shopping day for Amazon Prime members worldwide, it is billed as the biggest global Amazon event ever. The company will offer more than 100,000 bargains, with new deals popping up at five minute intervals throughout the day.

Apple is planning a major overhaul of its App Store, including the introduction of a new subscription model for developers and the implementation of a paid search ad program, SVP Phil Schiller indicated in interviews ahead of next week's WWDC. To encourage developers to sell their apps on a subscription basis, Apple plans to change the current 70/30 revenue-sharing structure.

Apple and SAP last week announced an agreement to create applications for the iPhone and iPad using SAP's HANA data management platform as well as an iOS software development kit and training academy for outside developers and customers. The move marks Apple's latest attempt to break through to the enterprise market and comes at a challenging time for the iPhone and sluggish sales for tablets.

Who is leading the mobile payment race? There are several players competing today. PayPal started the revolution 15 years ago, and Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay have joined the fray. Many newcomers are entering this space on a regular basis. The traditional money space has undergone change with innovations like debit cards and ATM machines, although they took a while to catch on.

Information technology -- especially the Internet -- can have a positive impact on the U.S. financial system. Used improperly, however, such tools can wreak havoc on the financial sector and consumers. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a unit of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, has launched an initiative on the future of e-commerce finance in light of technology innovation.

If you're just starting to sell your crafts or other handmade items online, one of the first decisions you'll need to make is how to accept customer payments. There are a variety of choices for payment processing, and many crafters use several. The methods you choose will depend on the needs of your business and your customers. One of the most common payment methods for small businesses is PayPal.

Shopify on Wednesday announced that it has agreed to purchase Kit CRM, whose Kit chatbot automatically sends out marketing text messages for online stores. It also lets businesses run targeted ads on Facebook and Instagram, make recommendations based on store activities, post on social media and use functionality provided by other social media apps, Shopify CMO Craig Miller said.

Facebook's WhatsApp last week announced it would roll out end-to-end encryption for its users, but the move could make the service more attractive to spammers. While encryption can safeguard information from data thieves, it also can block data protectors. The policy "will not stop the growth of spam on the platform and could make the problem worse," AdaptiveMobile's Simeon Coney said.

Facebook has been working on mobile pay and secret chat features for its Messenger app, according to a report published this week, based on clues found in extracted software code on Messenger for iPhone. Commands embedded in the software hint at secret conversations, similar to what's found in WhatsApp, and commands to pay in person and pay in Messenger when picking up an item.

Amazon has applied for a patent for selfie-based authentication for online purchases, according to a patent application published last week. Using the technology, a prospective purchaser would take a selfie, and the image would be authenticated against an image database using facial recognition software. The buyer then would perform an action to verify that the image is of a live human being.

Google on Wednesday announced that it has begun testing an app dubbed "Hands Free," which lets Android and iOS smartphone users make purchases via their devices without taking them out of their pockets or purses. Early adopters in Silicon Valley can use the system at some McDonald's, Papa John's and other eateries. The app offers connectivity via Bluetooth Low Energy, WiFi and location services.

MasterCard on Monday announced facial recognition and fingerprint technology that essentially would allow customers to take selfies to help authenticate their identity when engaged in mobile shopping. The rollout, which is planned for this summer in the U.S., Canada and part of Europe, follows a pilot of biometrics by MasterCard and International Card Services with Dutch participants.

Apple is planning an event to unveil a refresh of its iPhone 5s and its Apple Watch, as well as to introduce a new version of its iPad Air, according to a Tuesday report. However, the event date could change, or the company could opt for an online announcement. The 4-inch Phone 5se reportedly will look similar to the 5s and sell at the same price point: $450.

As the U.S. retail industry puts another long holiday shopping season behind it, a few changes appear to be taking place. For one thing, it appears there's a new recipe for success. Growing a business requires more than setting up a fancy website, placing inventory into a warehouse, and engaging a service to make speedy deliveries. That's in part because customer expectations have changed.

Worldwide downloads of Android apps in 2015 were double those for iOS, but revenues from iOS apps were nearly twice those of Android, according to an App Annie report released this week. First-time device owners in emerging markets drove the huge increase in Android downloads, researchers found. "This growth opens up avenues for publishers to create new markets," the report says.

Demandware and eBay Enterprise on Monday announced an alliance to develop a fully enabled omnichannel commerce solution that will provide integrated access to Demandware's Commerce Cloud platform and eBay Enterprise's suite of back-end and fulfillment technologies and services. The solution will let clients significantly reduce the complexity of managing their front- and back-end systems.

When Amazon launched Prime Day six months ago, skeptics came out in force to criticize what they considered Jeff Bezos' desperate ploy to add members to a club that appeared to be peaking in a saturated domestic market. Gimmick or not, Prime Day worked. Amazon sold more than 34.4 million items across eight countries where Prime was offered, and its Q3 profits defied just about all prior estimates.