Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The Staples Businesss Depot, which bills itself as Canada’s largest supplier of office supplies, is launching an RFID trial to test realtime inventory tracking, the chain announced Thursday.

The retailer said it plans to “tag thousands of items that will be dynamically tracked in real-time–at long range– from entering into store inventory, to store shelves, through to completion of the sales transaction,” according to a statement. “In addressing privacy concerns, the RFID tags are not concealed on the items and are re-usable. They are physically detached when the item is sold to the customer at a Staples Business Depot store.”…

Leveraging existing Wi-Fi investments and applying it to asset tracking is behind an expect sharp and ongoing increase in Wi-Fi RFID tag shipments, according to a new report from market analyst firm In-Stat.

"Despite some hurdles to overcome, Wi-Fi RFID tag shipments will grow at more than 100 percent annually through 2010," In-Stat said. Added In-Stat analyst Daryl Schoolar: "Historically, one of the key weaknesses of this market has been the short battery life of asset tags," but technology advancements are making "multi-year battery life now a reality."

The $81 billion European retail chain Metro Group is moving ahead with its Asian RFID supplier program, promoting a kick-off program today for 30 partners at the Hong Kong Science & Technology Park.

The "Tag It Easy" pilot is officially part of an initiative that Metro is calling Advanced Logistics Asia (ALA), which helps consumer goods manufacturers to apply RFID labels on shipments from Hong Kong to Germany.

As mobile computing devices start invading in-store operations—both what customers bring into the stores and what the stores will hand to those customers—the very nature of in-store networking is likely to undergo a dramatic change.

Consider this scenario: A customer walks into a favorite retail outlet and grabs a handheld shopping helper from a rack near the entrance. The handheld unit can communicate with RFID-enabled smart-shelves and their tagged item-level cousins, as well as signal digital signage to change based on the CRM profile of the approaching customer.Read more...

If you're going to be in the Boston area June 5th and 6th, would love to hook up with some of you at the ERIexchange show at The Boston Convention Center.

That show is actually shaping up to be quite significant, with keynotes from BestBuy CIO Bob Willett, CircuitCity CIO Bill McCorey and Metro Group managing director Gerd Wolfram, among other notables.Read more...

One piece of legislation that is now winding its way from the U.S. Senate to the U.S. House of Representatives prohibits pharmaceuticals from using RFID in anti-conterfeiting measures, according to this interesting story in RFID Update.

Although pharma and government uses of RFID are quite distinct from retail deployments, this effort–which is far from final–does signal several things that could impact retail RFID efforts.

First, it signals that the current legislative climate is open to severe RFID restrictions, which is a foreboding trend with consumer privacy protection issues in the wings. Secondly, pharma is a potential massive user of RFID. Anything that materially reduces that is going to impact volume pricing for all RFID uses. Much of the current RFID tag price reduction projections have assumed more-than-healthy pharma deployments. All said, it’s an important piece of legislation to watch. …

A new survey of U.S. and U.K. mobile web users shows that the number of people engaging in cellphone/PDA Internet activity is already almost one-fifth the size of their PC counterparts. The study from ComScore and Telephia found 19 percent in the U.K. and 17 percent in the U.S.

The U.K. study found 5.7 million people used a mobile device to access the Web during January 2007 compared with the 30 million people age 15 or older who accessed the Web from a PC. The U.S. figures for the same month showed 30 million opting for the PDA/Cell route, compared with 176 million U.S. PC Web users. “Similar to the Internet 10-15 years ago, men under the age of 35 are the early adopters of new technology and more likely to use mobile devices to access the Mobile Web than women or men aged over 35, ” said Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe.…

A new report has emerging technology–which it defines as electronic shelf labels, RFID and self-checkout terminals–shipments hitting $238 million by next year among European retailers. That’s about 52 percent more than the $157 million worth that the Venture Development Corporation (VDC) report estimated was shipped last year.

“While in the near term, traditional technologies will still dominate the market, these emerging technologies are expected to experience long-term growth due to technology refresh cycles, increasing end-user comfort levels (as a result of field-proven ROI with these technologies), and rapid price erosion in order to remain competitive,” said Andrew Nathanson, Director of VDC’s Automatic Identification and Data Collection Practice. “In order for the market to reach its full potential, retailers must view these emerging technologies as a mechanism for strategic pricing, inventory control and management, and a method in which to improve customers’ in-store experience — not merely a replacement for traditional technologies.”…

Throughout the five-month public history of the TJX data breach fallout, the industry has repeatedly tried to simplify it, to label one cause as the explanation, whether it was incompetent IT execution, an inside job, an open wireless port or some other clean explanation. But the TJX situation is complex, complicated and defies a simple explanation, just as their intruders were a lot more sophisticated, creative, relentless, daring and professional than anyone in the industry wants to believe.

A 5-second glance at the latest details has led many people to dismiss this as another wireless problem. The truth is that TJX offered intruders a generous smorgasbord of security holes, enabling the intruders to plant a trojan horse, steal an encryption key, sidestep less-than-diligently-monitored traffic logs and be able to grab credit card data before it was to be encrypted. So let's not paint TJX as security Eagle Scouts who happened to let their guards down on wireless.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the TJX break-in started in July 2005 with a wireless hack of a Marshalls in St. Paul, Minn, where the thieves “pointed a telescope-shaped antenna toward the store and used a laptop computer to decode data streaming through the air between hand-held price-checking devices, cash registers [POS presumably]and the store’s computers. That helped them hack into the central database of Marshalls’ parent, TJX, to repeatedly purloin information about customers.”

The news that the attack was wireless is not unexpected, as wireless attacks have become very popular means of attacking retail chains and because hints that the TJX attacks were wirelessly based have been frequent. But the level of specifics in the Journal story are surprising. Read more.…

Although retailers have loudly complained about credit card fees for years, 2007 is suddenly seeing a surge in active support for alternative payments. The credit card companies aren't worried, but perhaps they should be.

Just in the last couple of weeks, the number of major E-Commerce sites accepting alternative payments has almost tripled, Wal-Mart has bucked the industry trend to support e-checks and two major national retail chains are going to try accepting alternative payments at their brick-and-mortars. Three strikes and you're out.

For years, Asia has taken the lead in anything that intersects consumers and wireless, with Europe one notch behind Asia and the U.S. a good two notches behind Europe. It should be no surprise that the same pattern had emerged with the rolling out of various contactless applications, especially RFID-embedded credit/debit cards.

With that in mind, this story from CardTechnology is quite eye-opening, with a look at how Asian consumers are simply not taking to a major Japanese trial with contactless mobile-wallet phones from telco NTT DoCoMo and a major railroad.

Some 13 months after its much-anticipated launch in January 2006, only 350,000 customers had signed up for the mobile service. That’s only about a third of what the commuter rail operator had expected. Nor was 2006 a breakthrough year for any of Japan’s other contactless payment schemes that have launched service on wallet phones, known as “Osaifu-Keitai” in Japan. This piece is definitely worth reading if you’re considering any contactless payment project this year.…

Coke apparently considers contactless payment the real thing, as Coca-Cola, the nation’s third-largest bottler, moved to support cashless vending machines.

The soft-drink giant issued a rather non-effervescent statement confirming the move. “The United States is rapidly becoming a ‘plastic nation’ with fast food restaurants and convenience stores accepting credit and debit cards,” said Coca-Cola marketing VP Thacher Worthen. “We feel the time is right to begin providing these same payment options to our customers.”

Note from the Blog Editor about this photo: On the one hand, this is a perfect picture as it depicts a soft-drink contactless payment vending machine. I hope Coke doesn’t get too upset because of the beverage displayed. One can only get so picky when dealing with generic stockart. …

The young mobile retail space is starting to consolidate, with today’s announced merger of MobileLime and Cuesol. Sad but true, that the surest sign of a maturing market is when key players start eating each other.

Terms of the purchase were not announced, but the CEO/President of MobileLime–Robert Wesley–was named as the CEO/President of the combined company. That was the only personnel detail released.

Cuesol has focused on what it calls personal shopping experiences, including in-store kiosks and wireless cart-mounted touch screen browsers. MobilLime’s focus has been much more narrow, limiting itself to retail applications of cellphones.…

Both Visa and MasterCard this week were trying to firm up their respective contactless support, with MasterCard announcing a Coca-Cola vending machine deal while Visa rolled out contracts with Taco Bell, ShopRite and ClearView Cinemas.

The MasterCard deal was with the Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company and involves adding an e-Port G6 contactless device on vending machines first in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Visa’s lineup also included Braum’s Ice Cream and Dairy Stores.…

Europe's second-largest shoe retailer, the Hamm-RENO Group, today confirmed a program to embed RFID chips into shoes to reduce shrink and to improve customer service.

The deal was between Checkpoint Systems and Reno (part of HR) and it is starting with 700 branches in six countries: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Hungary.Read more...

ShopRite becomes the latest regional grocery chain to jump onto the contactless payment shopping cart, with the announcement that it will start accepting MasterCard PayPass cards.

The deal is officially between MasterCard and the Wakefern Food Corp., the merchandising and distribution arm of ShopRite, which bills itself as “the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the United States” with more than 200 locations in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Delaware.…

As the IEEE prepares next week to start focusing on the RuBee standard, the metal-and-water-penetrating RFID alternative is faring well with government and medical trials, said the executive primarily responsible for its launch.

Ironically, when RuBee first started getting attention about seven months ago, it was partly because of strong support from leading global retailers, including the U.S.'s Best Buy, U.K.-based Tesco, Germany's Metro Group and France's Carrefour. That's ironic because retail is the area where RuBee has simply not gotten any traction. To read the full story,

At a major industry conference in Barcelona this week, 14 significant telecom vendors pledged to support mobile POS as a part of a "new initiative," although there appears to be nothing new about the announcement at all.

The fourteen operators, which a joint news release says represents "more than 900 million mobile users," are Cingular Wireless (AT&T); China Mobile; KALL; KTF; MCI; MTN; NTT DoCoMo; Rogers Wireless; Smart Communications; Telenor, TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; Turkcell, and Vimpelcom. To read the full story,

EBay's PayPal unit has gone to public beta with its SecurityKey two-factor authentication unit, a product of its acquisition of Verisign Payment Services.

EBay is taking a loss by selling the devices for $5 to anyone who wants to participate in the public beta program, said Dan Levy, PayPal's senior director of consumer protection. In the contract Ebay signed with Verisign, it targeted purchasing a million of the tokens over three years. To put that number into context, PayPal alone has about 133 million customers and EBay has about 222 million registered users. Clearly, PayPal does not intend for a significant percentage of its users to purchase the device. To read the full story,

For retail RFID observers, the comment late last week from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that his department was abandoning RFID for one aspect of border protection should have been big news. Upon closer examination, it's really not.

The saga started last Friday when a major wire service reported that Homeland Security was abandoning RFID across the entire mega-department. On Monday, Homeland Security clarified that the comments were limited to the exit portion of its VISIT border control effort. Even so, if Homeland Security was abandoning RFID for that important program because of "unsuccessful" tests, those results should give pause to others. To read the full story,

The Discover Card people have launched a 1,000-person trial with Motorola to try mobile phone payments via the Discover Network in Chicago and Salt Lake City.

The near-field communications (NFC) trial will initially allow participants to check card balances and payment history in addition to making purchases—all solely using their cellphone. The pilot uses Motorola phones and its “M-Wallet” software and is designed to test the entire infrastructure associated with accessing real time account information over the air.…

The Department of Homeland Security is backing off its plans to use RFID to beef up border identification checks because the tests were “unsuccessful.” At least that’s what U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff testified to the House’s Homeland Security Committee on Friday.

“I think, yeah, we’re abandoning it. I think it’s not — that’s not going to be a solution” for keeping would-be terrorists out of the United States, Chertoff said, according to this brief report from United Press International (UPI).

Homeland Security Press Secretary Russ Knocke said Chertoff’s comments were limited to the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT).…

Verifone is taking the next logical (or perhaps illogical?) step with its wireless payment systems: sell commercials and other content on it that is timely informational.

As part of a wireless payment rollout with New York City yellow taxicabs, the vendor opined that as long as they were putting in the network in cabs, they might as well get their money’s worth. The mobile POS will have GPS map features, deliver electronic messages to drivers and feature a local ABC News weather and news report “updated several times a day. ABC, in turn, gets to sell TV commercials to a captive audience of taxi riders. Seems they’re trying to turn a really smart cash drawer into a cashcow.…