The luxury department store reported considerable sales increases in this year’s second quarter.

Nordstrom mobile commerce gets the credit for powerful online sales growth for the luxury department store. The company has released its 2016 Q2 earnings report. The report showed strong mobile engagement.

This powerful growth over mobile commerce occurred despite an overall decline in total sales in all channels.

Nordstrom mobile commerce is now outpacing shopping over laptop and desktop computers. In fact, the retailer has credited m-commerce for much of its current online successes. Shoppers using smartphones and tablets played an important role in the quarter’s e-commerce results.

This shift toward mobile shopping did not occur by accident. Nordstrom has been making considerable investments into mobile tools. The company wants customers to be engaged over their mobile devices.

Nordstrom mobile commerce was a high priority in Q2 2016 as the company focused heavily on its app.

The Nordstrom report revealed considerable insight into the company’s performance during the second quarter. It also underscored the power of mobile shopping as the company placed a focus on its smartphone app.

Among the insight provided in the report was the following:

• Nordstrom saw a year over year decline in total sales. They reached $3.5 billion, which was a drop of 1.2 percent over the same quarter in 2015.
• Total online sales for the company increased by 9.4 percent, year over year. In the second quarter of this year, they reached $683 million.
• Total off-price retail site sales and flash-sale site (HauteLook) sales exploded by almost 35 percent. This was a massive growth over the same quarter in 2015 as it reached $157 million.

The added investment into the Nordstrom mobile commerce app drove performance significantly. The company worked hard to ensure the mobile app would be highly engaging. Among the top features was one that allowed customers shop from specific store locations as well as a visual search function. Co-president and director of the company, Erik B. Nordstrom, explained that this effort was precisely what propelled m-commerce forward and beyond desktop during that quarter. It also explains why the retailer will continue to move in that direction.

The Chinese smartphone transaction system is launching in the western continent with a start in Canada.

China’s UnionPay mobile payments system is now in North America. It took its first steps into the continent by launching in Canada. This mobile transaction service is the international subsidiary of the Chinese interbank network. The network functions to link the credit and debit card payments throughout that country’s banks.

UnionPay International is enormous, placing third in the world as a payment network.

Only Visa and MasterCard are larger payment networks than UnionPay. This is primarily because of its reach throughout China and its recent rapid expansion outside the country. Now that UnionPay mobile payments launched in Canada, its QuickPass system will be available to many Canadian merchants. It will be focused on “daily spending” merchants in that country. This represents the first time the system has entered North America, despite its wide expansion elsewhere.

UnionPay mobile payments can be used with QuickPass enabled smartphones or EMV chip cards.

There is a QuickPass spending cap at $100 (CAD) for transactions without a PIN or signature when using either credit or debit. This is meant to enhance the system’s mobile security. Moreover, it will make it fast and easy for Canadian consumers to use the system without having to enter a PIN.

As of yet, it is not known precisely how many Canadian merchants are interested in these mobile payments. The number of companies participating in QuickPass was not revealed at the launch. However, UnionPay has said that there will at least be more than 70,000 merchants with the required tech. It also pointed out that the infrastructure in the country is well suited to accept contactless payments.

Therefore, there is potential that a sizeable percentage of those with the ability to accept contactless payments will participate.

At the moment, the North American launch of UnionPay mobile payments is exclusive to Canada. However, there is a very large potential audience in the rest of the continent. This may mean that the company is setting up to subtly become a direct competitor with certain leading mobile wallets such as Apple Pay.