Walmart, Starbucks, Others Say No To Interchange Settlement
With a week to go before the deadline for merchants to opt out of the $7.25 billion interchange settlement, a group of major retailers said on Tuesday (May 21) that they're not playing. Walmart,...
View ArticleMobile Point Of Sale Is Growing Fast And Turning Up Surprises
Use of tablets and iPods as point-of-sale devices is growing rapidly, but it's not going to knock cashwraps out of most stores anytime soon, according to an IHL Group report released Tuesday (May 21)....
View ArticleThe Long—Make That Really Long—Goodbye To Google Checkout
Is Google Checkout finally ready to checkout? We know all about the traditional Hollywood fondness for the long goodbye scene, but even by movie standards, Google is pushing it. Google has been trying...
View ArticleVirtual Retail Currency Could Translate Into Not-So-Virtual Legal Nightmares
In a bid to attract new customers, Amazon recently announced a new program in which it would give customers 50 Amazon "coins" to use in playing games and for other purposes. The idea is sort of like...
View ArticleFirst Data Could Scuttle Interchange Settlement
First Data Corp. has broken ranks with Visa and banks in the escalating interchange war. The card-processing giant formally objected to the $7.25 interchange settlement last Friday (May 24), saying the...
View ArticleWhat You’re Missing: Urban Outfitters Charging More Online, Does Sears Want...
Your friends here at StorefrontBacktalk editorial also now publish a daily retail site, called FierceRetail, and wanted to give you a sense of what you’re missing by not visiting or grabbing its free...
View ArticleWalmart: Settlement ‘Worse Than Losing’
In a last-minute interchange settlement objection filed on Tuesday (May 28), Walmart and more than 60 other retailers described the proposed settlement as worse than actually losing the case. The...
View ArticleVisa To Genesco: PCI Compliance? What PCI Compliance?
The predictable other shoe has dropped (please forgive that heel of a play on words) in the legal battle between apparel chain Genesco (NYSE: GCO) and Visa over PCI penalties, with Visa officially...
View ArticleFlaws in the Carbon Layer: Is a Penetration Test Without a Social Engineering...
Every QSA gets asked the same question about penetration testing: What is acceptable (translation: what is the least I can do) for PCI compliance? In the current environment of criminal (and...
View ArticleGuestView: Credit Unions Argue That Retailers Are Not Penalized When...
A recent story in a popular security newsletter featured a headline that got the blood boiling of GuestView Columnist Steve Sommers. The essence of the piece involved the National Association of...
View ArticleCongress Not Yet Done Changing—And Possibly Killing—State E-Commerce Taxes Law
As the Marketplace Fairness Act—aka state taxes for e-tailers law—settles in for a House fight as it approaches becoming the law of the land (having easily passed the Senate and with a White House...
View ArticleGoogle Wallet’s Osama Bedier Confirms That Google Lost Money With Every...
Osama Bedier, the former PalPal exec who took over Google Wallet (and is now about to become a former Google exec as well), Young bought a kd pathak oct 2013 immediate ingredient. Evenings keratosis...
View ArticleRakuten Breach: Live By The Web, Get Punished By The Web
Please forgive the cliché, but when hundreds of online shoppers say that your site is sick, it should lay down. The Japanese E-Commerce powerhouse Rakuten, which is just months away from a planned...
View ArticlePCI’s New PIN Rules: A New Document Is Issued To Require You To Create A New...
When the PCI Security Council issued new rules for PIN transactions on Friday (June 7), beyond the usual small tweaks and updates, there was essentially only one new rule impacting retailers: Device...
View ArticleStill No Apple Mobile Wallet, But A Card-Number Keychain That May Be Just A...
Anyone who was expecting Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) to jump into in-store mobile payments this week is probably feeling...well, comfortably disappointed. The big keynote speech at Apple's Worldwide Developers...
View ArticleJury Rules For Barnes & Noble In Gift Card Patent Case, But The Implications...
On Friday (June 7), a federal jury ruled in favor of (Barnes & Noble (NYSE:BKS)) in retail. The arguments focused on when is a giftcard transaction truly processed—is it when the card has money...
View ArticleCyberthieves Are Going Low-Tech, And The Only Way To Stop Them May Be To Go...
At a time when retail IT is getting better at locking down just about every avenue cyberthieves have of breaking in—PINpads, wireless networks, connections with processors—it's nice to know the bad...
View ArticleWhere In The World Is ISIS Wallet?
With all of the recent attention to Google Wallet, thought it might be interesting to do the same about some of the other digital wallets in the market – there are so many now! Since someone was asking...
View ArticleExtremely Sad News
It pains us greatly to have to report to you that our PCI Columnist, Walt Conway, passed away on Tuesday (June 26) after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Professionally, Walt had that rare ability to...
View ArticleAs Chain Trials Facial Recognition, Channel Assumptions Flip
A major Russian convenience store chain, Ulybka Radugi, is now running a trial of facial recognition to choose digital in-store ads to be displayed and POS coupons to be offered. But as more chains...
View ArticleWhy Quarterly Vulnerability Scanning Is An Impressively Stupid Idea
The current PCI DSS quarterly vulnerability scanning requirement is nothing short of ridiculous, given the fact that most operating system vendors and some application software providers release...
View ArticleSquare Mastering PayPal’s “Don’t Tell Store Associates And See What Happens”...
When a Reuters story this week detailed that retail associates were oblivious about a Square service being offered in their stores, it had a frighteningly familiar ring to it. We have repeatedly run...
View ArticleSafeway Self-Checkout Security Hole Illustrates The Importance Of Button...
The self-checkout software at a Safeway chain in California, Vons, lets the shopper move directly to the payment area and then still buy more items. This bit of flexibility likely seemed a good idea at...
View ArticlePhone Makers Are Still Opening Security Holes By Spying On Phones
A security researcher in Seattle has identified yet another program running in the background of some smartphones in the name of collecting quality of service information. This time the phone is...
View ArticleMajor Chain Loses PCI Compliance When Data Center Moves
One of the nation's 15 largest retail chains had done a tremendous job segmenting its network to reduce the scope of its PCI assessment. All of that was thrown away, though, during a simple data center...
View ArticlePCI’s Not-So-Open Global Forum
PCI's Global Forum is an open forum in name only, at least as long as it continues to force changes on members that they are not permitted to even know about until someone who has been briefed chooses...
View ArticleWalmart Sales Tax Snafu: How Did They Get This So Wrong?
In a sterling example of what big retailers' POS software is not supposed to get wrong, Walmart has apparently been charging too much sales tax on two-for-one coupon deals in Pennsylvania in violation...
View ArticleWhy Did Gonzales Hackers Like European Cards So Much Better?
Last Thursday's (July 25) indictment of five more Albert Gonzalez gang members by federal prosecutors in New Jersey is a reminder of how big that operation was (and may still be) and how far...
View ArticleNow Asda, Morrisons And Europe Are Going After Visa And MasterCard Over...
First there was the $7.25 billion interchange settlement that big chains mostly detested, largely because it would outlaw future interchange lawsuits. Then came a flurry of retailer lawsuits against...
View ArticleSelf-Service Shifts Legal Risks, May Let Customers Off The Hook
One of the great things about the Internet and computer technologies is that they can empower consumers and businesses to do things that ordinarily require a middleman. Consumers can purchase their own...
View ArticleWalmart’s Scan & Go Change Reminds Us How To Make Mobile Work
One of the many advantages of mobile payment is significantly expanding CRM reach, getting to know about a far greater percentage of all of a shopper's purchases. Nowhere is this more attractive than...
View ArticleWhen Replacing NFC, Tech Is Really Not The Issue
Seems that the thing to say today, when discussing a retail mobile interaction method (be it for payment or loyalty or couponing)is to say it's an alternative to NFC (Near Field Communication). What a...
View ArticleCan VeriFone Actually Outsource PCI Problems?
In theory, you can't outsource PCI issues, but VeriFone wants to try. On Monday (Aug. 5), the POS maker announced VeriFone Point, a payments-as-a-service offering that basically takes everything in the...
View ArticleCourt To Fed: Keep The (Inter)Change
On July 31, a federal court in Washington sent shock waves through the merchant, banking, and credit/debit card industry by overturning the Federal Reserve's rules implementing limitations on the...
View ArticleHarbor Freight Breach May Be Biggest Of 2013, Issuers Say
What looked initially like a two-store payment-card breach may end up being one of the biggest breaches of 2013. In late July, the 425-store discount hardware chain Harbor Freight Tools posted signs in...
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