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About Us

Editors

Evan Schuman | Todd L. Michaud | Marvyn Tinitigan | Walt Conway | Frank Hayes

(Note to PR people: Interested in pitching a story to StorefrontBacktalk? Here are some helpful tips on how to convince us you have a good StorefrontBacktalk story. Also, here’s our 2013 Editorial Calendar.)

Sales

Jack Fordi

Site Management

Marvyn Tinitigan

Profile of our readership

Evan Schuman

Editor/Publisher
eschuman@storefrontbacktalk.com
A journalist for more than 23 years, Evan Schuman’s background includes news reporting for radio networks (including CBS Radio News, National Public Radio, AP Radio and CNN Radio), consumer news organizations (including The New York Times, BusinessWeek, USA Today, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), wire services (Reuters, AP and UPI) and technology/business publishers. He served as an editorial manager for 11 years at CMP Media, where his posts included News Editor at InformationWeek, News Editor at TechWeb, Editor of The Internet Business Report and Editorial Director for the Custom Publishing division. In the online arena, Schuman has been actively involved in the launch of more than 40 corporate Web sites, holds two Patents Pending on streaming multimedia techniques and has tracked the Internet since 1988. He’s also a frequent guest lecturer on business issues at New York University’s masters degree program.

Before launching The Content Firm, Schuman served as VP/Editor in Chief of Triangle Publishing Services Co. Inc., a Massachusetts company that also creates business content. He has consulted with dozens of Fortune 1000 companies on marketing and public relations issues. For more information on Schuman, please visit his personal Web site at www.evanschuman.com. In the summer of 2006, launched his own retail technology blog called StorefrontBacktalk. Schuman also serves as the Executive Editor of FierceRetail and FierceMobileRetail.

Frank Hayes

Senior Editor
fhayes@storefrontbacktalk.com
An award-winning technology and business journalist, Frank Hayes spent
12 years as a weekly columnist for Computerworld. Before that he was a reporter and editor for Computerworld, Informationweek and Byte, among others. Hayes also serves as the Executive Editor of FierceRetail and FierceMobileRetail.

Jack Fordi

VP, Sales and Business Development
jfordi@fiercemarkets.com
Jack Fordi oversees all sales and business developments for StorefrontBacktalk.

Todd L. Michaud

Franchisee Columnist
Todd.Michaud@FranchiseIT.org
Todd Michaud has spent the last 16 years trying to fight IT issues, with the last six years focused on franchisee IT issues—first running the retail technology department for Dunkin’ Brands (Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins) and now running IT for Focus Brands (Cinnabon, Carvel, Schlotzsky’s and Moe’s Southwestern Grill)—and both sides need to step back and better understand the reality of the other. In his weekly column here at StorefrontBacktalk, he’s going to try and bridge that gap as we look at all of the IT hot buttons of today, from RFID, CRM and E-Commerce to mobile, payment, PCI, self-service, kiosks and supply chain.

Marvyn Tinitigan

VP/Technology
marvyn@storefrontbacktalk.com
Marvyn is StorefrontBacktalk’s resident technology/design expert. He is responsible for the web site’s programming maintenance as well as the beautiful look and feel that you see here at StorefrontBacktalk.com.

Walt Conway

PCI Columnist
wconway@403labs.com
A 403 Labs QSA, PCI Columnist Walt Conway has worked in payments and technology for more than 30 years, 10 of them with Visa.

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Most Recent Comments

"Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code." -Marc

Will Warranty Enforcement Be Amazon Marketplace's Achilles' Heel?

Nathan
I buy most of my nerd toys on Amazon and I had never stopped to consider that I may be shooting myself in the foot in terms of warranties. I'll have to make a point of checking the seller's info to confirm they are authorized distributors (at least for high-ticket items). Thanks for the head's up! Read more...

When Replacing NFC, Tech Is Really Not The Issue

A reader
Folk wisdom on the net suggests that if you are given a "free" product, look carefully at the terms because you are no longer the consumer - you are the product. If Google offered free readers to merchants, what would they be getting from those merchants? Data. They would be able to close the loop on when and why customers who research on line buy from a bricks and mortar store. This would enable Google to know retailer price points, which searches are most effective to get those products in front of on line advertisers, and to be able to sell that advice to others. Not every retailer would want to provide such data to their competition. Read more...

Court To Fed: Keep The (Inter)Change

terry
This was an easy way for merchants to effectively directly remove money from a customer’s bank account. The risk of default was low, as was the cost of processing. Merchants had to install new PIN-based POS terminals, but many banks and acquirers helped to subsidize these costs by setting the interchange fees at “par” (no fee) or even reverse fees as a subsidy. Read more...

Walmart Sales Tax Snafu: How Did They Get This So Wrong?

Paula
I've been in the industry for a thousand years and didn't know about these "collection fees". Actually checked with my former boss, a COO of a major multichannel retailer, and neither he nor his CFO knew about it either, even though his company is taking advantage of it in a couple of states. Read more...

PCI's Not-So-Open Global Forum

Marc
I agree with your premise that the PCI SSC needs to do a better job of communicating with POs. I don't agree with your QSAs interpretation of PA-DSS requirements. 4.2.7 is not specific to user accounts with user databases. "4.2 Payment application must provide an audit trail to reconstruct the following events: 4.2.7 Creation and deletion of system-level objects within or by the application." The standard interpretation, in my experience, is that the application must provide an audit trail for system events. Read more...
Stephen Ames, CISA, CISSP
I received confirmation from the PCI Council's director of data security standards that my PA-QSA was not exacly spot on with his guidance. Without getting into too much detail, my application in question is compliant with PA-DSS 4.2 out-of-the-box. I'll be having a conversation with my PA-QSA about this. Read more...

Why Did Gonzales Hackers Like European Cards So Much Better?

David True
I am still unclear about the core point here-- why higher value of European cards. Supply and demand, yes, makes sense. But the fact that the cards were chip and pin (EMV) should make them less valuable because that demonstrably reduces the ability to use them fraudulently. Did the author mean that the chip and pin cards could be used in a country where EMV is not implemented--the US--and this mis-match make it easier to us them since the issuing banks may not have as robust anti-fraud controls as non-EMV banks because they assumed EMV would do the fraud prevention for them Read more...
Marc
Two possible reasons that I can think of and have seen in the past - 1) Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code. 2) Also, in offline chip countries the card determines whether or not a transaction is approved, not the issuer. In my experience, European issuers haven't developed the same checks on authorization requests as US issuers. So, these cards might be more valuable because they are more likely to get approved. Read more...
Biff Matthews
A smart card slot in terminals doesn't mean there is a reader or that the reader is activated. Then, activated reader or not, the U.S. processors don't have apps certified or ready to load into those terminals to accept and process smart card transactions just yet. Don't get your card(t) before the terminal (horse). Read more...
Mimi Hart
The marketplace does speak. More fraud capacity translates to higher value for the stolen data. Because nearly 100% of all US transactions are authorized online in real time, we have less fraud regardless of whether the card is Magstripe only or chip and PIn. Hence, $10 prices for US cards vs $25 for the European counterparts. Read more...
A reader
@David True. The European cards have both an EMV chip AND a mag stripe. Europeans may generally use the chip for their transactions, but the insecure stripe remains vulnerable to skimming, whether it be from a false front on an ATM or a dishonest waiter with a handheld skimmer. If their stripe is skimmed, the track data can still be cloned and used fraudulently in the United States. If European banks only detect fraud from 9-5 GMT, that might explain why American criminals prefer them over American bank issued cards, who have fraud detection in place 24x7. Read more...

Changing Terms of Service? Be Ready For A Class Action Lawsuit

Bernard Regier
Very enlightening article. In regards to policy statements/terms of service, why hasn't Craigslist been sued up the wahoo for not allowing users to cancel their memberships? Of their many uncouth business practices, including complete lack of accountability and doling out strange, arbitrary punishments to out-of-line members(see customerservicescoreboard.com for 8-9 hundred horror stories), disallowing individuals to terminate service seems the most unlawful. I don't know anything about contractual law or online regulations, but If I owned a store, I could refuse or restrict service to anyone or lock them out if necessary; what I CAN'T do is lock them in!Your thoughts? Read more...
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