According to this, Asian telecom operators Chunghwa Telecom (Taiwan), HKT (Hong Kong), KDDI (Japan) andSK Planet (South Korea) have jointly announced the formation of the Asia NFC Alliance, with the support of the GSMA.

"The Alliance aims to promote cross-border mobile NFC services. The Asia NFC Alliance aims to extend the service coverage of these mobile operators from within a country to the whole Asian region and furthermore to provide global mobile NFC services across industries, including transportation, retail, finance, tourism and others. Subscribers are set to be able to access NFC applications across national borders, whether in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea or other countries in the future."

"In December 2013, HKT has partnered with banking consortium JETCO to expand NFC-based mobile payments services."

Dotcom River has recently announced a three-year span report called the “eCommerce Poland 2013 Report” covering the years 2011 through 2013. Its main focus is to reflect an objective standpoint for Poland’s ecommerce business potential.

"The report highlights salient market factors which influence industry-based investors, such as the annual increase in the number of customers who shop online reported to the population of the country. The report also signals that the ecommerce market rose to 30% in 2012, as compared to 2011, a notable increase and luring for foreign investors and online retailers."

"According to the report, at a European level, the Polish ecommerce market stays in between extremes with a percentage of population buying online between 30% and 50%, which means that Poland is a rapidly developing ecommerce market, along with Ireland, Austria or The Czech Republic. Poland stays between Germany, UK, France, Norway or Sweden whose percentage of online shoppers passes well beyond 50% and Spain and Italy whose percentage of online shoppers drops under the 30% barrier."

"The Polish ecommerce market is currently estimated at EUR 6.5 billion, consistent with its growth of over 20 percent year-over-year."

"The growing popularity of online shopping, including mobile transactions, wider access to broadband internet, dissemination of courier services and non-cash payments, as well as personalization of offers and a higher attention to quality of service are some of the dominant factors contributing to the fast development of ecommerce in Poland. For 2013, there is a 68% penetration rate of Polish internet users, among whom 48% online buyers."

"The present Executive Summary Report sums up a three-year span comprehensive study, appealing to 14,000 Polish e-retailers and e-consumers. "

According to this, Israeli authorities have announced the citizens that the use of Bitcoin’s digital currency may pose threats and that regulations are under proposal for implementation in the local market.

"Israel's central bank governor, Karnit Flug, has held a meeting with regulators of the capital and insurance markets, Tax Authority, and the Israel Money Laundering and Terror Financing Prohibition Authority. Analyses are performed for the issuing of solutions related to the use of, and trade in, virtual currencies. Analysis is focused on unpredicted macro effects, their legal standing, their regulation, money laundering and terror financing risks, taxation, and consumer protection."

"Bitcoin, a decentralised open source electronic money network, uses cryptography to secure transactions by means of peer-to- peer (PTP) networks and the use of anonymous transfers and does not require centralized financial institutions. In 2013, Bitcoin`s exchange rates jumped by 700% in the first quarter, reaching over USD 1,200 by the end of the year."

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"] Source Cloud-iq[/caption]

GetElastic published article about how big data will transform ecommerce.

"Ecommerce is on the verge of a big shift driven by big data and intelligent technologies. This shift is towards a more efficient, personalized, even automated customer journey. Emerging personalization tools are designed to mimic the brain, leveraging neural networks and deep learning. Netflix is already moving in this direction, and it’s known Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo and others are also embracing these technologies through startup acquisitions and key hires."

"Inspired by the central nervous system, Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are computational models capable of machine learning and pattern recognition. Deep learning neural networks have more layers of abstraction than ANNs and have the ability to train neural networks to do some pretty incredible things like image recognition, natural language processing, language translation and automatic speech recognition."

"Back in 2008, Get Elastic featured Pluribo, a Firefox extension with natural language processing and sentiment analysis capabilities. One useful application was filtering down hundreds of Amazon reviews into a summary of pros and cons. Unfortunately, Pluribo fell victim to the financial crisis of 2009 and lack of VC funding. The concept, however, has huge implications for guided selling, alone or in combination with other deep learning tech."

"An ecommerce system with a Her-like artificial intelligence could receive a voice query: “I’m looking for a full-frame camera with long battery life, compatible with Mac OSX” and not only deliver personalized results, but can also ask further probing questions that the customer hasn’t thought about. For example, “what types of subjects do you typically shoot?” or “how important is size and weight to you?”"

"It’s not far off before computers will also recognize emotional signals like excitement, indecisiveness or frustration through voice or facial expression. There’s a current Indiegogo campaign that aims to build the first emotionally intelligent home console that understands conversation, mood and can react to these emotions with conversation. While an emotionally intelligent ecommerce application is dialoging with a customer, it can also tap into an aggregate of behavioral and sentiment data to suggest the most likely relevant alternatives and help the customer arrive at a confident purchase decision."

"Google is working on giving computers the ability “see.” It’s already built a tool that can recognize human faces, body parts and…cats…the most common contents of Youtube stills and Google Hangouts. The ability to search for matching products based on Google Glass snapshots, pictures on the ‘Net or other images offers a new way to search and discover products. Glass may play the role in identifying your eye fixation, further giving the machine context of what in the field of view you’re interested in."

"Pinterest recently pinned down and acquired a visual search technology to make searching for photos in context much easier. Rather than depending on user keyword tagging, visual search will identify images that match a word or other images (e.g. similar to pins you’ve already made). Imagine the implications for an ecommerce store. Via the Pinterest API, an ecommerce application with visual search functionality could look at a board or collection of boards and profile a customer’s tastes and intent. Or, a customer could upload a photo of anything (taken from a smartphone, Google Glass or found online) and match it against a product catalog. Ecommerce marketers that curate Pinterest boards could automate the process and discover far more than a human could with just keyword search and good luck."

"The popular audio-recognition app Shazam now has an always-on feature that listens for audio all day long, tags songs that don’t exist in your library, and makes them available for your perusal, saving you the hassle of unlocking your phone, loading the app and nearly causing an accident in your car (or whatever your context). Imagine with machine learning, Shazam and products like it could intelligently filter your auto-tags to what you’d most likely be interested in based on your existing library. And further than that, with deep neural networks, be able to decide which to go ahead and add to your library, even making a purchase on your behalf."

"Sound crazy? Amazon recently filed a patent for “anticipatory shipping,” which ships and order before it’s even placed. Amazon’s wealth of order history, search, wish list and click stream data may one day be leveraged this way. While at the moment, it’s just a patent, and we can foresee all kinds of snafus that can arise from making decisions on behalf of (and charging) customers, it’s not unreasonable to envision a day when menial tasks like purchasing groceries, sundries and gifts can be outsourced to an efficient, intelligent machine."

"It’s not about Big Data, it’s about smart data.”