We first introduced mPoria (www.mporia.com) when we told you about the integration of their popular GoMobile! service with PayPal's mobile commerce initiative (Digital Transactions has the most recent news about that).

Today, mPoria announced that their already impressive roster of companies, e.g., Buy.com, Cutter & Buck, TicketsNow and MooseJaw, has been joined by 40 more in the last 3 months. Supposedly, those 40 new customers represent a 300% explosion of their customer list. If nothing else, it has made their page of selected customer logos pretty long!

It's also worth noting that the company has already signed partnerships with leading wireless carriers such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon. Between its heavyweight partners and strong customer growth, mPoria is clearly one to watch. We'll keep you posted.

The big news this week of Wells Fargo and Visa's mobile payments partnership is just another sign of how much momentum the mobile trend has gained in recent months. That momentum truly struck home as I read this article from CNBC about the roster of major banks with mobile banking initiatives.

• Bank of America
• Citibank
• Wachovia
• Washington Mutual
• Wells Fargo
• ING Direct

That's a literal who's who of the banking industry with 4 of the top 5 banks in the country. In addition to that list, the CNBC article includes a basic introduction to the different forms of online banking, a few interesting adoption stats and quotes from just about every research group covering the space. Sadly, they missed Jim, but you can get his insights and predictions via his recent Mobile Banking Report.

As we've pointed out before, industry associations can be a great place to learn about mobile banking, commerce and payments. Today, I'd like to introduce you to the Mobey Forum, a " nonprofit, global, financial industry-driven forum, whose mission is to encourage the use of mobile technology in financial services."

Founded in 2000, The Forum now includes an impressive list of (mostly European) members like ABN Amro, Bank of Ireland, HP, Nokia, HSBC and UBS. The organization's stated goal is to promote secure and user-friendly mobile banking and payment services based on open architecture and non-proprietary standards.

Given that focus, it is interesting to browse their documentation section which includes detailed white papers on both technical and business sides of mobile financial services. Plus, don't overlook their list of some mobile financial services trials that have taken place.

The big news of today comes from Seattle-based (MM&B's hometown!) mobile commerce leader mPoriathat has announced a partnership with (mobile) payments giant PayPal. The deal will enable shoppers at m-commerce retailers using mPoria's GoMobile! storefront to check out using their PayPal accounts.

mPoria has quietly built a popular program for retailers that enables them to easily reach the more than 90 million consumers with m-commerce capable phones in the United States. Already companies such as Buy.com, Cutter & Buck, TicketsNow, MooseJaw and others have implemented the affordable service, and the company looks poised for growth.

Certainly, there is plenty of activity in mobile commerce related to physical goods. The revenues in the space grew by an estimated 40% last year according to Telephia.

More news about the partnership should be revealed soon. We'll keep you posted.