Newcastle Building Society is to be the issuing bank for a pioneering study that will see an initial 5,000 smart pre-payment cards replace cash and cheques for financial transactions.
Mobile communications firm Orange is planning to offer UK businesses the latest device from HTC, known as Shift, which includes a seven-inch touch screen mobile computer.
Mobile devices such as PDAs and phones could run advanced enterprise software applications within the next five years as data transfer speeds rise, according to experts at this year's Mobile World Congress Show.