Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The good news: no Google-style POS changes required, at least not to meet Microsoft specs. The bad news: no help from Microsoft, either. Unless you build your own in-store shopping app, the Microsoft Wallet will basically do contactless card emulation—and not much more.Read more...

Here's how that magic works: A couple of MPOS-armed associates approach some of the overflowing lines and announce that if anyone has a payment card and would like to be checked out with a mobile device to please say so.Read more...

When automated, do such tools facilitate good interactions and help customers encourage each other's purchases (such as saying whether an outfit looks sharp with those shoes or if that drillbit is the proper one for a particular fix-it job) or will it just freak shoppers out when it helps strangers approach them? In New Jersey, for example, a stranger approaching while smiling is legal justification for using deadly force.Read more...

The less good news—at least from a QSA's perspective—is that Visa seems to have joined MasterCard in relegating PCI compliance to an afterthought. Read more...

On the surface, the additions are innocuous, with new punch-card-like functionality integrated into the system. The effect of this, though, is for retailers to even more completely turn over crucial information to Square, which can use it for whatever purposes Square wants. If Square later wants to market to a retailer's customers directly—on behalf of itself or even possibly a rival—it theoretically can.Read more...

What the pizza chain came up with is a way for consumers to make their own pizzas, with the touch intensity and finger distance used dictating how the dough will come up, whether the slices are cut uniformly and how evenly distributed toppings are. It's a game—for now.Read more...

Microsoft on Monday (June 18) set out to prove that retailers have alternatives to Apple for tablets and that Microsoft still matters. Unfortunately, it ended up proving the opposite—for both.Read more...

Does traditional mobile commerce have a shot anymore in the U.S.? Or has the industry muddied it up to the point where we need to start over, as Apple and Burger King are trying? We tried to address that politically sensitive topic in the first of our new monthly columns with Retail Week, the U.K.’s largest retail publication.

The reasons why mobile is having trouble are plenty, but it’s fair to say that when MasterCard is the one arguing that mobile payment PCI regulations should perhaps be ignored, something has changed. When MasterCard starts to sound like the most rational and reasonable one in the room, Alice, you know you’ve gone through the looking glass. Please check out the column on Retail Week or, if you’re not a Retail Week subscriber, you can check out a picture of the column right here. …

There are several ways Apple could do that. But one thing seems clear: After the fruitless straining of Google Wallet, ISIS and PayPal to get customers and retailers on board, Apple's design philosophy of "it just works" means the impact on retailers of iPhone mobile payments should be nearly invisible—except that customers may actually use it.Read more...

Burger King's method can work on any iPhone or Android, completely denies any payment-card data to the retailer (keeping the whole trial out of PCI scope), requires no hardware changes and is all based on a cheap printed QR code stuck on the back of the POS or on a drive-through window.Read more...

Domino’s Pizza released an eye-opening figure on Monday (June 11): It has sold more than $1 billion worth of pizza (from mid-April 2011 to mid-April 2012) solely through digital channels. With all of the talk about the chain’s two mobile apps and its dedicated mobile site, that billion seems to suggest the power of mobile. But what Domino’s did not say in its statement tells a very different story.

Although it’s quite true that mobile sales are soaring, it turns out that 93 percent of those billion dollars worth of digital sales were on the plain old Web site. And 70 percent of sales are still the phone into a brick-and-mortar type. There shouldn’t be much of a stunner in that 93 percent figure, but with all of the mobile hype going on, it’s important to remember that figure to keep things in context. (Note: Domino’s also said that it’s selling more through its iPhone app than through Android. Given that the iPhone app has been out for several months longer, according to Domino’s spokesman Chris Brandon, that may not mean much.)…

The retailers who shelled out $185,000 per name to buy their E-Commerce sites' domain names all over again include Macy's, Gap, TJX and Home Depot. But Kroger, Walgreens, CVS and Lowe's gave the vanity domains a pass.Read more...

Debenhams, a $4.2 billion chain with 167 stores across the U.K. and Ireland, sees it differently and argues that free Wi-Fi—which the chain will shortly announce chain-wide—is crucial. Is this a U.S.-U.K. difference or a difference in strategy?Read more...

But 337-store apparel chain Eddie Bauer is going against the trend, deliberately opting for a minimalistic approach. No Wi-Fi in its stores, no in-store product location, no geolocation to locate stores and no mobile app at all. With a primarily female demographic aged 35–55, Eddie Bauer Digital Marketing Director Michael Saracino talks up his chain's new mobile site and said he is focusing on what he calls mobile's "practical features."Read more...

What's unusual isn't that Oracle is stepping up to defend its customers. It's how the database giant is doing that: by using its initial court filing to list dozens of previous patents that, Oracle says, prove the Patents-in-Suit should never have been issued.Read more...

But when those same shoppers worked with the same retailers using an iPhone, iPad or Android device, 67 percent of them opted for alternative payments.Read more...

Just a reminder that StorefrontBacktalk now has five free monthly newsletters, each one focusing on a different key area for us: E-Commerce, Mobile, PCI/Security, In-Store and CRM. The Monthlies—see the descriptions here—are available to anyone via a quick E-mail sign up.

The Monthlies publish the first half of each month, and they are a great way to catch up on all of the news in a given area. So before you miss the June Monthlies, sign up for your free copy. …

The more interesting PayPal mobile capabilities, such as displaying a headshot to confirm customer identity and alerting the store as soon as a registered customer walks in, are only being offered for much smaller retailers, typically one-location boutiques.Read more...

Yes, everyone hates the last-generation E-mail king, which on Tuesday (May 29) announced an operating loss and layoffs. But earlier this month RIM also finally agreed to let carriers and banks use NFC-enabled BlackBerrys for payments in Canada—without coupons, ads or a cut for RIM.Read more...

Gartner said: "Worldwide mobile payment transaction values will surpass $171.5 billion in 2012, a 61.9 percent increase from 2011 values of $105.9 billion." Within minutes, a statement from IHL said: "Mobile in all aspects of retail is now a $5.5 billion market worldwide."Read more...

MasterCard on May 23 released formal guidance giving retailers a roadmap to implement MPOS using smartphones, tablets and other devices equipped with a "card reader accessory." The problem? The recommended best practices may not be PCI compliant and they conflict with MasterCard's own rules, as the card brand acknowledges.Read more...

The irony is that opening new store brands online is easy, once a chain has its E-Commerce presence up and running. Infrastructure can be shared, and the challenge is mainly making the new brand distinctive. But if anything, going the other way is actually harder than opening a completely new physical-store brand from scratch.Read more...

That's unlikely—if widely deploying a technology was the problem, contactless cards would have wiped out magstripes years ago. But will Apple use Bluetooth for payments? We may know by the end of the summer.Read more...

What is the "price" of an item? New technologies enable the prices charged, and the display of those prices, to change instantly. Ask anyone trying to purchase a plane ticket from New York to Detroit what the "price" of that ticket is. Read more...

That's not a bad turnout for a normal technology trial. But ISIS is promising just hundreds of locations in cities with a total population of nearly a million—and considering the weak consumer response so far to mobile wallets, anything less than an overwhelming assault may already be doomed.Read more...