Just how prevalent are NFC-enabled mobile devices becoming? The latest numbers from Berg Insight reveal that thirty million handsets equipped with Near Field Communications technology were shipped last year.

What’s more, global sales of handsets featuring NFC increased ten-fold over the previous twelve months.

As a result of the past and projected growth in the near future, Berg believes that shipments will reach 700 million units by the end of 2016.

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This week, ViVOtech, the near field communication (NFC) software and systems company, confirmed their ambitious plan for the near future.

The company announced the first closing of its Series D round of funding, which will bring ViVOtech’s total funding to $96 million since the outfit was founded in 2001.

So what will all the cash be used for? To support ViVOtech’s growing market momentum and drive the rapid expansion of mCommerce worldwide.

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On Friday, Juniper Research published its latest report projecting that NFC will drive mCommerce to new heights during the next 36 months.

Juniper forecasts that NFC will facilitate $74 billion in transactions annually by 2015. This reality will manifest, says Juniper, as NFC becomes increasingly more relied upon by consumers.

However, as Juniper takes great care to emphasize, “The Mobile Commerce Markets report shows that the rapid adoption of mobile devices for commerce-related applications is by no means limited to NFC.”

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The following is a guest post from Jim Wehmann, senior vice president of global marketing for Digital River.

Mobile commerce continues to generate a lot of buzz among online marketers. It holds out the promise of sizable incremental sales as tablet and mobile smartphone shipments continue to soar. Smartphone sales in 2012 are expected to be nearly 1.8 billion units, while tablet unit sales are expected to climb to nearly 100 million. Mobile commerce in the hands of this many consumers is a very exciting prospect. And it speaks to the very core of direct marketing – go where your customers are rather than waiting for them to come to you. Mobile commerce will truly enable consumers to purchase anytime, anywhere – on the commuter train, at the pool, at the game and everywhere else on the go.

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Isis, the joint venture by AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless, continues to make great strides in the mobile payments arena. That much was clear from Monday’s announcement by the group, which heralded new partnerships with VeriFone, Ingenico, ViVOtech and Equinox Payments, all of which will integrate and support the Isis Mobile Commerce Application in current and future product lines.

The agreements with leading payment systems providers will help accelerate the wide scale introduction and adoption of mobile commerce, Isis says.

Barely 18-months old, Isis has come substantially farther than most initially expected when the organization formed with the stated intention of advancing NFC and mobile payments as a way for consumers to securely pay for purchases and redeem mobile coupons.

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Another day, another headline for mobile payments.

On Thursday, MasterCard and BOKU a global provider of online mobile payments – announced a partnership that will enhance the shopping experience for consumers. How so? By allowing them to make payments, receive discounts and targeted offers, and monitor spending – all from their mobile phones whenever MasterCard PayPass is accepted.

The Boku partnership, which highlights yet another move by MasterCard to claim another chunk of the mobile payments space, is being gregariously hyped by both partners.

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As Mobile Marketing Watch reported Tuesday, word recently surfaced that Google’s mobile wallet commerce platform is vulnerable to potential criminal attacks from hackers who have figured out how to gain access to the Google prepaid card already linked to a user’s smartphone. The discovery was of such grave and immediate concern that over the weekend a Google representative “strongly encouraged” anyone who “loses or wants to sell their phone to first call Google Wallet support to disable the prepaid card.”

On Monday, Google temporarily disabled provisioning of prepaid cards. “We took this step,” Google said, “as a precaution until we issue a permanent fix soon.“

Well, this morning, Google fans awakened to the news that the Internet search giant has restored prepaid card provisioning capabilities to the mobile payments platform. How come? Google says it has successfully addressed the underlying vulnerability and hack attacks can now be successfully averted.

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