Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The largest factor hitting gift cards will be the traditional complaint that they are seen as too impersonal (cash is impersonal, too, but there's something about a stack of greenbacks piled in front of a cozy fireplace that is hard to resist. Maybe that's just a New Jersey thing).Read more...

The Web is overflowing with analysis of the TJX data breach disaster, but this posting from Plausible Deniability does a better job than most. What’s intriguing is the possibility that some of the indicted suspects may have worked as code writers in the light of day for some major companies, including Morgan Stanley.

With so much security outsourcing today, it raises some uncomfortable questions about how much you really know about the security specialists you now have working in your computer room.…

We see tons of variations on the meta-search concept for E-Commerce, but this site seems to have hit on a truly practical combo: An engine that finds the lowest prices and simultaneously finds relevant coupons and then integrates the two.

The site, PricesandCoupons.com, says its display will include redemption instructions and expiration dates and claims to only show “name brand merchants who have solid customer service ratings.” How PricesandCoupons defines that last part is where my eyebrow raised, but the concept still has some serious potential.…

The credit database giant argued that such a card could potentially reduce "the need for companies to retain customers' personal identification information, which could also result in the reduction of risks posed by data breaches." Although that theoretically could be the case, the only way such a card—dubbed the Equifax online identity card—will be successful is if it's adopted by a large number of retailers. And each of those retailers would have to be willing to surrender one of their most precious pieces of data: customer history. Read more...

Instead of making giftcards worthless once they’re emptied, Target and Best Buy have opted for the other extreme: With enough micro electronics, the gift cards themselves might be worth more than the merchandise they can buy.

Target’s gift card is available as a tiny digital camera while Best Buy’s card sings loud and clear as a speaker, complete with a 3.5mm jack to connect with an iPod, according to this Gearlog story.…

The defendant pleaded guilty to heading a conspiracy that netted more than $1million by using phony UPC labels to obtain products and then sell them on eBay, according to this story in The Register.

Tommy Joe Tidwell, 35, of Dayton, Ohio, pleaded guilty to three felony counts, including conspiracy to use unauthorized access devices, use of unauthorized access devices, and mail and wire fraud. The best part of the story, though, is that it shows the ineffectiveness of using ratings to sort out legit from non-legit sellers. “As was the case with an airport baggage handler charged with stealing passengers’ stuff, Tidwell’s eBay account enjoyed a stellar reputation. Out of 522 comments left, only four were negative, giving him a positive feedback rating of 99.2.”…

Federal prosecutors have apparently accused a New York man of providing a sniffer program to help the TJX cyberthieves steal payment data. The fact that 25-year-old Stephen Watt has been charged with unlawful access to computers, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering is not in dispute, nor is the fact that he has been accused of delivering a sniffer program to accused TJX mastermind Albert Gonzalez.

But the feds have been vague about whether Watt was involved in the TJX data heist, even though the timing of the accusations would seem to place him in the middle of the largest payment card data breach ever, according to this Computerworld story. Watt allegedly provided a sniffer program that allowed Gonzalez and other gang members to identify and capture credit and debit card data traveling over the networks they had broken into. In January, Watt edited and modified a sniffer program dubbed “blabla” that was used by the gang and stored in a server with a Latvian IP address, according to the story.…

MasterCard’s PayPass is ramping up its mobile program with an over-the-air provisioning service to supposedly make it easier for consumers to personalize their payment data on their mobile devices.

As long as a consumer has a phone using Near Field Communications (NFC), MasterCard says the program should work. “First, the PayPass application is securely transferred onto a secure area of the consumer’s mobile phone via the mobile network. Next, the PayPass application is personalized with the consumer’s individual payment account details,” a MasterCard statement said.…

RFID sales globally will be more than $5.3 billion this year, with supply chain management, ID documents, ticketing and contactless payment drive shipments leading the way, according to a report released Monday (Nov. 3) by ABI Research.

If you take automobile immobilization out of the picture, RFID is slated to grow at a 15 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2008 through 2013, and ABI projects the market will be worth about $9.8 billion in 2013. Said Research Director Michael Liard: “To a casual observer, the five-year CAGR for the RFID market as a whole may not seem impressive at face value. In this case, however, traditional applications with single-digit and low-double digit five-year compound annual growth rates continue to dominate current and near-term RFID market revenue share. If these traditional applications—access control, automatic vehicle identification, automobile immobilization and ID documents—are removed from the equation, the 2008-2013 CAGR for total RFID systems revenue exceeds 20 percent.”…

Whether you call it outsourcing or tokenization, software-as-a-service, virtualization or even, gasp, cloud computing, it's essentially a "risk avoidance" strategy. However, most of what we see is more avoidance than strategy.Read more...

Let's not get too optimistic here. "Mostly unharmed" doesn't mean escaping untouched. But it does mean that when large companies—especially retailers—have to suddenly make do with a lot fewer people, they need that good ole IT magic more than ever. They need the efficiencies that IT promises and the employee-replacing devices that IT enables. Read more...

Genesco, which owns more than 2,000 stores operating as nine different chains including Johnston & Murphy, Dockers and Journeys, learned this week how POS receipt customization can be remarkably dangerous.

Seems that an associate programmed a series of options for a cashier to choose when identifying the customer. One of the choices programmed? “Dumb Ni**er.” Yes, the forbidden racial slur, and a 22-year-old Missouri man found it printed on his receipt at a Journeys. There’s a nice story about the incident on ABCNews.com and the video link shows much more detail. Doesn’t a manager check these things? And if it was approved, that store has a lot of explaining to do.…

Simply put, retailers selling very high-priced items to a decidedly well-to-do clientele often invest much more heavily in creating a comfortable environment with an abundance of personal attention. There's a reason retailers such as Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, Armani, Coach and high-end jewelers tend to be the last to embrace kiosks, mobile-commerce and online promotions. Read more...

Are they ignoring the product or are they picking it up, reading the label and then quickly putting it back? Does the timing and eye movement indicate they were repulsed by the sugar content (near the bottom) or the low fiber count?Read more...

The group originally called the PCI Alliance, which changed its name to the PCI Security Vendor Alliance on Tuesday (Oct. 21), has changed its name again–this time to the Payment Card Industry Security Alliance (PCI SA). Mercifully, it never bothered to change its URL, so it’s still pcialliance.org.

“By removing ‘vendor’ from our name, we broaden our appeal to merchants as well as vendors, thereby making it easier for the two to work together on creating PCI compliance solutions and best practices,” said Alan Bird, president of the PCI SA. Yep. But also, the impression that a PCI Vendor group was simply trying to sell stuff was hard to shake.…

E-Commerce customers who speak English are “the most frequent victims of identity theft, twice the rate of France, Germany and Spain,” according to a study released Tuesday (Oct. 21) by PayPal. The E-mail survey of 1,000 consumers was conducted this summer and examined six countries: the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

The survey touched on quite a few possible causes, but this was our favorite, even though it didn’t explain the language preference: “The survey found that about 40 percent of consumers in all six countries use social networking sites and some of these consumers display personal information that they also use for passwords.” I’m reminded of the line from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where Butch says he has no idea why he’s always broke, to which a colleague points out that he’s a really bad gambler, is always buying drinks for everyone, taking expensive vacations and is a soft touch. Butch replied: “Well, that might have something to do with it.”…

The trial features three retailers: a small technology café; a midsize, regional Tokyo-area chain; and one of Japan's largest retailers--Bic Camera, whose revenue last year was roughly equivalent to $6 billion. The trial's goal is to show that the consumer phones can hold the loyalty card data of more than 100 retailers, depending on how much data each retailer wants to store. Read more...

A DPA attack, as described in the report, takes advantage of the electrical impulses inherent in any smart card. "The silicon chips embedded in smart cards consume power whenever they process payment data and it is possible for criminals to measure these power fluctuations surreptitiously and then analyze them to decode the secret keys that secure the data," the report said.Read more...

Some two-dozen terminal vendors shipped 11.9 million units worldwide in 2007, a 21.8 percent increase from the 9.8 million in 2006. As happens typically in a growth segment such as authorization terminals, vendor consolidation has concentrated control—and, therefore, retail purchase options—into far fewer hands. Nilson reported that the top six vendors last year controlled 85.7 percent of all terminal shipments, an increase from 79.3 percent in 2006.Read more...

The issue is real, in that many consumers do object to the pricing differences as they see it being a scam. The Circuit City "one price promise" move could ultimately prove to be quite a clever piece of marketing. First, it will be trumpeted as a consumer advantage, even if it means that the price equality will be achieved by sometimes (all the time?) online pricing being raised to match the in-store price.Read more...

The non-traditional Home Depot kiosk trial is based more on the units themselves—small mobile units, some as tiny as 5-inches tall—and the size of the chain's planned kiosk commitment: Well north of $100 million for full deployment, according to the technology consultant handling one of the trials.Read more...

Yes, it's a wacky juxtaposition, but stay with me for a moment. There has been a steady noise coming from retail franchisees who are trying to drive more of their stores' IT strategy. Why now? This IT manager said it's another impact from the economic freefall. When the dollars were flowing freely, having sophisticated reporting wasn't seen as a priority. "Some didn't care about their labor or inventory. A third of our franchisees couldn't have told me what their product costs were," the exec said. Read more...

This month, it was the turn of Wal-Mart (or Walmart, depending on whether the reference is to online or a store. Of all of the people trying to derail merged channel efforts, Wal-Mart/Walmart's branding people are the Supreme Emperors).Read more...

The implication in the customer service comment is that shoppers can get checked out more quickly with a self-service unit. That's actually not often the case. Read more...