Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

In the ongoing sage of the TJX breach, the Wall Street Journal today quoted police sources that law enforcement “looking for a possible TJX link in a spate of recent arrests involving credit-card fraud in Alabama, North Carolina and Virginia.”

This comes on the heels of Florida giftcard arrests tied to TJX data. The Journal also quoted an unnamed TJX spokesperson saying: “While we cannot confirm that the data involved with the Gainesville arrests came from TJX, we continue to cooperate with law enforcement.” Yes, it’s not one of the more informative quotes, but it’s the first we’ve seen of TJX even acknowledging that Florida exists.…

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.…

SAP used the CeBIT tradeshow on Thursday as the backdrop for its entry into the RFID software space, with what it claims is the first ERP enterprise-level RFID application.

The goal is take the avalanche of data RFID and RFID-related systems are creating—with everything from EPC, RFID tags, barcodes and sensors—and marry them with ERP data. "This is so you don't end up with 10 different repositories for 10 different reasons," said Krish Mantripragada, SAP's global head of RFID. To read the full story,

Intel on Tuesday will aggressively move into the RFID arena, integrating enough RFID into one of its chips to cut reader prices anywhere from 50-60 percent.Intel is expected to make its first move into the RFID space and will try and cram enough discrete components into its chip to slash reader prices, reduce power consumption and shrink the needed footprint.

The UHF RFID transceiver branded by Intel will be called the R1000 and the chip giant is claiming to have schmooshed "approximately 90 percent of the discrete components found in a typical RFID reader radio (including receive, transmit, baseband, modulation and demodulation functionality) onto a single chip." To read the full story,

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...

Our Week In Review audiocast returned this week, courtesy of guests from Forrester Research, IHL and the Retail Systems Alert Group. This week’s show was hosted by eWEEK.

Topics included the latest from the TJX ongoing saga and Forrester’s predictions of the top E-Commerce trends for 2007.…

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).…

As a few supermarkets trial customer held scanners to check out items as they shop–sort of a wand approach to a smartcart–the Baltimore Sun caught up with some consumers to get their reactions.

“I wish every store had this,” said White, 39, who recently moved to Sykesville from Baltimore. “This has made my shopping more efficient. As I see my bags getting full, it makes me think about what I’m buying, rather than just piling stuff into the cart.” Not a lot of new information, but an interesting look at how consumers are reacting to the technology.…

An interesting mobile phone payment trial is going on in Taiwan, with consumers being allowed to download MasterCard PayPass cards–plus promotions and coupons–over the cellular networks into a near-field communication (NFC) phone.

The trial, being run by MasterCard, Taipei Fubon Bank, Taiwan Mobile and VivoTech, zaps coupons to consumers “by simply touching mobile phones on smart posters located throughout the region and at retailer’s storefronts,” according to a joint statement from the group. Participants, however, need to use ViVOwallet software to view and select cards for payment and coupons for redemption and then only at ViVOpay-enabled POS stations.…

An innovative RFID trial in Tokyo is using RFID-tagged lipstick to record when various samples are tried as well as to give store clerks full customer history of products purchased as well as tried.

The trial—involving retail chain Mitsukoshi, cosmetics company Shiseido and RFID vendor Fujitsu—also offers consumers a "virtual real-time makeup" session featuring a camera-equipped kiosk, display and RFID tag reader "that will enable customers to view on the display how particular products would look on their face by waving tagged cosmetic products such as lipsticks or eyeshadows over the tag reader," the companies said in a statement.Read more...

Singapore’s Institute for Microelectronics on Monday announced a new silicon chip that it boasted will slash RFID prices. For example, IME officials claimed that an RFID reader built with the new chip will cost less than $100, weigh less than 100 grams and consume less than a watt of power, according to a story in ZDNet.

That compares quite favorably with a typical RFID reader that “costs a few thousand dollars, measures about 6 by 6 inches, weighs approximately 1 to 2 kilograms and consumers about 10 watts of power, the story said.

IME execs told reporters that the biggest hurdle for RFID deployments today is integration, so IME’s approach was a “highly-integrated” 0.18um RF CMOS (radio frequency complementary metal oxide semiconductor) reader IC (integrated circuit), which is usable for multiple RFID tag scanners and compatible with the requirements of different countries, the story said.…

The world of retail technology has learned to always take notice when the Metro Group–a massive German retailer–starts to take anything seriously. So when Metro this week confirmed that it had invited Checkpoint Systems to join its ambituous 36-dock door trial of Gen2 RFID, it raised some eyebrows. Checkpoint’s official role is hardware integrator for the trial.

Each of 36 adjacent dock doors at the Metro distribution center was equipped with a Gen2 RFID reader, according to a story in RFID Update. At the same time, pallet loaded with about 60 tagged Procter & Gamble goods was passed through each portal and onto a docked truck at full operational speed, meaning each pallet was in the RFID read field for between one and one and a half seconds, the story said. A joint statement put the accuracy at a “98.6-percent-plus read rate simultaneously from multiple pallets as they were wheeled through the dock doors.”

“The results represent a significant milestone in European RFID operational deployment,” said Dr. Gerd Wolfram, Managing Director of Metro’s Information Technology Group.…

As key governments–especially in Latin America and Asia Pacific–start protecting against the most common forms of credit card fraud, they are pushing the thieves into other countries and making it the problem of another country’s retailers, according to a new report from market research firm Frost & Sullivan.

“There is a noticeable shift in card related fraudulent activities to
neighboring countries using less secure magnetic stripe cards for a majority of their transactions. With the United Kingdom implementing Chip
and PIN and France implementing dynamic data authentication (DDA) cards, countries such as Germany and Italy are facing the brunt of the increasing migration of fraud,” the report said. “Singapore and Indonesia are facing a significant threat from fraud escalation and are considering a move toward EMV-compliant card technology. This phenomenon is significantly feeding the demand for electronic funds transfer (EFT) at point-of-sale (POS) terminals worldwide.”…

Tokyo’s famed Ginza shopping district is about to be surrounded by 10,000 RFID tags and beacons, intended to help navigate visitors to local merchants.

The Tokyo Ubiquitous Network Project seeks to install RFID, infrared and wireless transmitters provide location-related information to people carrying prototype readers developed for the trial, Ken Sakamura, a professor at the University of Tokyo and the leader of the project told the IDG News Service. It features a 3.5-in. OLED (organic light-emitting diode) touch-panel display and a host of networking interfaces. There is RFID, infrared and 429-MHz wireless for interacting with the beacons in the trial, a wireless LAN for connection to the Internet and a Bluetooth link. General trials in Ginza are scheduled to begin on Jan. 21 and will run until March.…

Although RFID is making major adoption advances globally, different continents are using the tags in very different ways, according to a report just released by British RFID analysis firm IDTechEx.

North America, for example, leads the world in retail applications (thanks, Wal-Mart) with Europe and East Asia faring better in the Finance space and Australiasia is supreme in the books/libraries/archiving category.

“Contrary to popular opinion, this is at item level, from books to jewellery and apparel, not pallet and case, which is in the ascendant only in North America and then only in the number numbers of RFID projects, not the money spent, which has been little more than $100 million under the retail mandates,” the report said.…

Global Data Synchronization Network (GDSN) efforts got a major boost this month from Wal-Mart, as the retail giant set this month as the deadline for many of its suppliers to comply or die trying.

The Jan. 1 deadline was included in an October letter that was dispatched to an unspecified number of suppliers demanding both compliance and an aggressive data-cleansing effort, according to a report in Computerworld.

The story said the letter claimed that GDSN is no longer a “bleeding edge” technology but is “now a mature solution providing tangible benefits for retailers and suppliers.” Touted benefits reportedly included improved purchase order accuracy, fewer administrative errors, better supplies of stock and greater speed in getting product onto the shelves.…

The best gift for a cyber thief is retail and banking apathy. The good holiday news for those thieves is that, this year, they're making out a like a bandit. Security and privacy are among the top issues for consumers so it seems odd that so many retailers and banks often take security so very lightly.

Please don't get me wrong. Officially, all executives with those entities say they take such matters seriously, but when we listen to the day-to-day management, the priorities seem to be elsewhere. Consider an upcoming report from the Aberdeen Group, which details a survey of retail IT execs who were asked to discuss contactless payment.Read more...

Dr. Pepper and Snapple vending machines in Dallas, New York City and Chicago will now be contactless payment friendly, according to a deal announced Thursday between MasterCard and the Cadbury Schweppes Americas Beverages. As part of that deal, the test machines will accept “all major credit cards” and not just those using MasterCard’s PayPass.

The agreement also included USA Technologies, which makes the e-Port device that lets the vending machines accept contactless payments. The companies said “as many as 1,000” Pepper/Snapple machines effort is the beginning of a larger contactless rollout for 5,000 POS terminals and vending machines in a dozen U.S. cities, including Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, Seattle, Miami, Orlando and Washington, D.C. That larger rollout “will be installed over the next several weeks and represents the largest rollout of contactless technology in the vending and POS markets,” a joint statement said.

The move is not unexpected, as the contactless payment space is one of the brighter spots for RFID. But the vending machine segment is especially compelling as candy/snack/softdrink prices soar, making cash payments more inconvenient.…