While the Bank of America has partnered up with Visa to begin testing out mobile payments later this month, analyst firm Forrester says one big question remains - are consumers ready to ditch their plastic?

According to Forrester analyst Emmet Higdon, the test is less one of the technology involved, but the user interface and whether or not "consumers' current love affair with smartphones is enough to change card payment behaviors that date back more than 50 years."

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The mobile-payments trial run involves equipping a group of users' phones with near field communications (NFC) technology, which currently does not come installed, but we expect to see as a pre-installed feature in the near future. NFC makes

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When it first came by, people saw opportunity. Now, they are dismayed. Competition thrives online and e-commerce isn’t an eBay story for everyone. For every Amazon or eBay, there are scores of commercial websites beating brows to figure out ways to make it to the top or in some cases, make enough to survive. Merchandising online needs to be reinstated and done with a few points to bear in mind – just what needs to be done to heat up the cash registers?