Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

It used to be only chains that kept detailed databases of competitors' prices. Now every coupon or rebate Web site has data that's even more current, which makes beating a chain's price-match promotion trivial.Read more...

Given that a thief can easily walk off with a device that costs hundreds of dollars to replace and is easy to sell, this could change the loss-prevention equation when it comes to tablets. The biggest challenges now may be making sure the POS app is locked down—and convincing police to call Apple. Exactly how easily and extensively can Apple track? Details shared with police are telling.Read more...

A key reason? The U.S. stores' systems were more secure and more sophisticated, which also slowed down operations more. The irony: Had the U.S. self-checkout systems been less secure, they might still be there.Read more...

In that category, Shopkick blew everyone away with an average of 3 hours, 19 minutes and 11 seconds. So why did Shopkick blow everyone else away, average time spent wise? It has to do with the nature of that app, not that its users were so enraptured by the content.Read more...

To be clear, Verifone only acknowledged that one of three hacked PIN pads came from it. In addition, the secure electronic payment technologies vendor said it's already testing a fix. Great—that means other PIN pad vendors have similar security issues. We just don't know which ones.Read more...

Sometime in mid-July, the machines were given a "routine update" via a blast from a Walmart server, said Walmart spokesperson Ashley Hardie.Read more...

That theory is crucial to the century-old chain's makeover, which Johnson said will also include all-RFID sales ticketing within six months, elimination of cashwraps by the end of 2013, and a plan to combat showrooming by making 75 percent of its inventory JCPenney-only products to make direct price comparisons impossible.Read more...

That means no signage telling customers about it, no references on the retailer's Web site (and certainly not its homepage), no marketing, no reference in E-mails to customers and no associate training so that at least they can tell customers. The mobile map app itself doesn't even have Walgreens' name, so if a customer using either an Apple or an Android smartphone went searching for Walgreens, he or she wouldn't find it. The only way to download the Walgreens map app is for a shopper to happen to know to search for the vendor's name.Read more...

The problem with this needle match is that what sticks in the minds of consumers is a PIN pad playing Pong—and with that image, who can take payment security seriously?Read more...

There are a lot of interesting twists involved in this same-day delivery strategy—including some unusual ways one Amazon insider said the master site could deploy it—but there's a bizarre trend here.Read more...

A lot of Amazon sellers will have a lot of cleanup to do, but there's a bigger issue here. Customers who go to Amazon had their orders canceled and, third party or not, that's going to undermine their faith in Amazon. Buying from a third party on Amazon's site is supposed to be the best of both worlds: a chance to give business to small players while enjoying the security and reliability of the Amazon environment.Read more...

Apple's billion-dollar third-party payments business takes a larger than Visa cut, sets less flexible than Visa operating rules, and then offers less help than Visa in securing transactions. And this is the company that's supposed to rescue retail from Visa's interchange rates?Read more...

A company called QThru, for example, is making waves with a mobile app that handles product identification and completes mobile payment through scanning an old-fashioned barcode. Its claim to fame: that the app identifies the product within two seconds even when the hand holding the phone (which is taking the picture of the barcode) and the hand holding the product with its barcode are both shaking and when the barcode is incorrectly positioned.Read more...

The purge also sets the stage for the chain's "new technology platform" that CEO Ron Johnson said will be announced in August. From all indications, the focus will be on mobile and in-store, not the datacenter.Read more...

Sure, this is chump change to Google, customers don't care much about privacy and you're not Google. But the same dynamic could leave any E-Commerce site with holes in security or PCI compliance, especially because your carefully vetted procedures can get sidestepped as soon as an emergency fix is required—and any glitch qualifies as an emergency.Read more...

Maybe Apple can’t dominate every in-store device niche after all. A blog discussion at KioskMarketplace this week has kiosk developers debating whether the iPad’s lack of wireless-only connections, relative screen fragility and regular need to be reset makes it a poor choice for kiosk conversion. (The original July 2 post is headlined “iPad kiosks: The cheap, unreliable kiosk solution.”)

As commenters to the post point out, there are workarounds to some of the technical problems (though not to the persistent problem of Apple’s lack of enterprise support). But with a burgeoning crowd of iPad-to-kiosk vendors and given the fact that lots of chains are looking hard at such as approach, it’s worth asking how much of the vaunted Apple experience customers will get from an iPad buried in a kiosk. Customers won’t get to handle it or switch between apps—from their point of view, it’s just another touchscreen running a single kiosk application. Which may make iPad conversions just not worth the trouble for retail chains. But who knows? Maybe Apple has finally found a retail use for the Macintosh: as an oversized iPad emulator.…

As retailers are embracing cloud computing more, they are rapidly discovering there’s plenty of bad to go with the good. And the complexities and unanticipated gotchas are making the cloud experience decidedly less than thrilling. Four recent incidents beautifully illustrate those gotchas.

The cloud is still a wonderful experience. But its nirvana-like reputation is now coming down to Earth a bit, we argue in our July column for Retail Week. The column resides here at Retail Week, but those who have yet to subscribe to the U.K.’s largest retail publication (for shame!), we have a copy here, too.…

The chain, Wyndham Hotels, is also accused of other supremely naughty security procedures, including storing full payment-card data in clear text, not having proper network segmentation and deploying classically bad password policies. "For example, to allow remote access to a hotel’s property management system, which was developed by software developer Micros Systems Inc., Defendants used 'micros' as both the user ID and the password," said the FTC's federal filing.Read more...

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...

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...

The good news: Virtually all the large retailers got their response times down under the fabled three-second mark. The bad news: There's no longer a clear correlation between speed and site size and the number of files requested, the variables that Pingdom tracked in this study.Read more...

In a letter the state ruled that cloud operations are fully taxable, assuming the end user is in Pennsylvania. "The ruling represents a marked departure from the department's earlier treatment of cloud computing. Prior department guidance advised that access to software solely through the Internet was not a taxable transaction, as long as the server did not reside in Pennsylvania."Read more...

But what choice does a retailer have? Even though it's a hassle, a chain can't simply opt to not support the leading browser, can it? Maybe not, but one Australian E-tailer has opted to fight back against one version of Internet Explorer: It's now charging customers a 6.8 percent IE7 tax.Read more...

"Too many (U.K.) retailers still don't fully understand what skills are required to run the online channel," Newman wrote. "There tends to be too much emphasis on technical skills and not enough on core retailing requirements such as good old-fashioned day-to-day trading." Some good thoughts there for retailers on any continent.Read more...

One reader who is now working with a major hosting company on a cloud contract specifically had this experience. He asked the vendor to accept contract wording identical to statements that hosting firm had publicly applauded. The vendor refused, saying "the CSA is a marketing and collateral document. It was not created to be a contractually binding document."Read more...