Awareness of mobile payments has been stoked by Apple Pay, which Apple introduced last October. Apple has partnerships with dozens of American banks, allowing Apple Pay to work with most major credit cards. Some retailers, like Walgreens and Whole Foods, have said mobile wallet payments in their stores have grown significantly since the debut of Apple Pay. Now Apple is preparing to introduce something new for Apple Pay at their World Wide Developer Conference next month.

Analysts have long noted that a missing piece of the mobile wallet from Apple Pay has been a rewards program to keep users returning to participating merchants. People familiar with Apple Pay said that next month, Apple will announce such a program offering perks to consumers who make purchases with the service, though they declined to reveal details.

Today, Google is set to unveil plans at its annual developer conference that will overhaul its mobile payment products. Changes include a service called Android Pay that will let merchants accept credit card payments from inside their mobile apps and can be integrated with loyalty programs at retailers, the people said. Google Wallet, a mobile commerce app, will also be reintroduced as a peer-to-peer payments app that consumers can use to send money to each other directly from their debit accounts.

Google's new Android Pay can also be used at brick-and-mortar stores in addition to letting merchants accept credit card payments from their mobile apps, said the people familiar with the company's plans.

The challenge for Apple and Google, along with rivals, is that the mobile wallet is generally a technology in search of a problem. Cash and credit cards are easy to use and accepted broadly worldwide. As a result, the mobile wallet is typically more of a supplementary service than a replacement.

Nonetheless, mobile payments are growing quickly. Forrester Research predicts they will balloon to $142 billion by 2019 in the United States, almost tripling from $52 billion in 2014. For more on this story, see the NYTimes report here.

Earlier this month we posted a report titled "Apple's CEO Bullish on Apple Pay in China with Progress Slow and Steady." In that report we noted that during Apple's Financial Call back in January Apple's CEO Tim Cook had noted that Apple pay was off to very fast start with over 750 banks and credit unions already signed on to bring Apple Pay to their customers and that 2015 was going to be the Year of Apple Pay.

Since then Home Depot appears to be preparing to accept Apple Pay this fall and even Walmart has hinted the same. In addition, Best Buy will be coming on board as will Discover. Apple is now working hard for a breakthrough with the banks in China along with a closer deal with Alibaba.

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