Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

Pay By Touch (officially Solidus Networks Inc. doing business as Pay By Touch) issued a statement on Thursday that it "regretfully announced today that it will no longer process biometric transactions on behalf of its merchant customers and consumer membership base, as 11:59:59pm March 19, 2008."Read more...

For those who contend that PCI's only purpose is to transfer risk from the card brands to the retailers, Taylor writes, "I've worked with a number of retailers on PCI projects over the past few years and, believe me, retailers already own the risk of a breach. It's their brand on the line and they don't need the card brands or their acquiring banks to tell them that." Read more...

"The PCI Security Standards Council is made up of seemingly smart folks from the credit card brands and security industry. Unfortunately, this group of misfits is saddled with a myriad of competitive conflicts of interest and, worst of all, a complete misunderstanding of how to best protect card data and consumer identity," writes Adams. Read more...

Among the retailers that are referenced as most intelligently embracing merged channels–the true channel-agnostic merchant–is Borders, whether it’s with their new concept stores or their breakup with Amazon.com.

It’s therefore an especially troubling note that they are having financial difficulties, as detailed in this New York Times piece. It’s an age-old business belief that few chains truly buy into and adopt major strategic changes until it’s too late. I hope that Borders turns out to be the exception.…

The science of reverse cryptography is a fascinating one but this is a rare story that gives some explicit details on how such science is done.

The Computerworld story uses the MiFare chip fiasco as an example and describes the microscope examination, the many in-depth photographs and how researchers sliced off minuscule layers from a 1-millimeter-square shred of silicon. “There are thousands of tiny blocks on the chip — about 10,000 in all — each encoding something such as an AND gate or an OR gate or a flip-flop.” A rare look into how poorly security holds up to a dedicated hacker, whether it’s the good kind or not.…

Shortly after reports surfaced that the Hannaford grocery chain had been PCI compliant at the time of its data breach attack, the Web has been crawling with those questioning the value of PCI, even as the confusing preliminary details of the breach are being sorted out.

As one who has frequently used this column to point out the many flaws within PCI, please allow me to stand up and say to those PCI critics: What planet are you from that tolerates only perfect security systems? Do they conclude from one successful burglary of a house protected by a top-notch burglar alarm and high-security deadbolts that burglar alarms and deadbolts are worthless? Read more.…

During the breach, "no personal information, such as names or addressed, was accessed or obtained" but the breach did expose customer credit and debit card numbers along with their expiration dates, said Hannaford CEO Ronald Hodge.Read more...

You don't address security concerns by pretending they don't exist. You acknowledge that everything is relative and that weaknesses are there but there are advantages, too. Read more...

This is one of these “everyone already pretty much knew this but it’s nice someone took the time to prove it” studies. The University of Arkansas was paid by Wal–Mart to find out whether RFID actually improves inventory accuracy. It found that, yes, it does, to the tune of some 13 percent.

But the methodology is a lot more interesting than the as-expected result. The team followed air fresheners at 16 Wal-Marts for 23 weeks where “a national inventory-auditing group determined each day’s on-hand air-freshener inventory by manually counting every item in all 16 stores.” Read this RFID Journal piece for a look into how to prove inventory accuracy and why a retailer can never afford to duplicate this study.…

A grocer offering milk cartons that glow when their milk turns sour and a programmable soft drink that will change its flavor to a consumer’s whim. These are two of the more unusual ways nanotechnology may impact retailers in the next few years, according to this fascinating story in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald.

While the product capabilities can be exciting, the potential health hazards are better described as terrifying. If groceries of any kind are among your SKUs, you should check this piece out. …

The European Union has given the greenlight to Google’s multi-billion dollar takeover of Doubleclick, saying that there will still be plenty of online ad competition.

The European go-ahead followed a similar decision by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission late last year. “Google is hoping to offer a fuller set of online-advertising offerings and capitalize on DoubleClick’s relationships with Web publishers and advertisers to sell ads on behalf of more sites, with Google taking a commission,” the Wall Street Journal reported.…

"Since Bernie ordered me to accompany him on this stupid trip to Philadelphia and we sit here in a five-hour connecting flight delay in Chicago, it's the least I can do to thank him by giving his luggage a much-deserved holiday in Hong Kong," deviously thinks Brad, the junior LAN administrator with far too much time on his hands. Read more...

As of January, at least 60 percent of retailers have POS systems that are older than 5 years and a healthy chunk of those are more than 10 years old, according to an Aberdeen survey of 175 merchants.

The report tied those aging POS units with customer service problems “as order management, loyalty programs, and payment acceptance processes are fraught with delays,” according to this RetailWire column about the Aberdeen study…

Some retailers cite the relationship between Enron and Accenture as an example of why they do not use their PCI assessor for remediation services, or purchase security products from their assessor. Read more...

"We need to do a little more training," said Michael Verdesca, the chain's VP for systems development. Read more...

The laptop label that the company, Cybersource, uses is not actually based on the computer's unique identification, as such data can't be easily learned by the clues they drop when surfing. Instead, it's based on the intersection of several routine characteristics, which combined make it fairly likely it's the same machine. Some of the individual details would include the browser version, the exact operating system ID and the time differential on the system's clock ("clock drift"). Read more...

As Wal-Mart toys with various approaches to grow and continue to dominate retail, a Wal-Mart experiment in Michigan is fascinating in its difference. It has crafted a store focused on the local Middle Eastern community, complete with Muslim greeting cards, Lebanese pop CDs and kusa and batenjan among the produce offerings.

Technology is not a key factor in this store’s approach, according to this detailed Newsweek story, but the store truly catering to the local residents is impressive nonetheless. How’s this for not acting like Wal-Mart? “The insular company even agreed to be scrutinized by a community advisory board made up of local Arab-American leaders to ensure it isn’t harming the mom-and-pop shops. One example: Wal-Mart agreed to charge one dime more than local grocers for a six-pack of pita bread.”…

JCPenney and Krogers are the latest U.S. members of the National Retail Federation’s Association for Retail Technology Standards, joining the newest global members of Tesco, Carrefour and IKEA.

The Association for Retail Technology Standards is an international membership organization that, since 1993, has said that it was dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards.…

Hello, blog readers! We’ve been approached by a company that wants to create a 3-D environment for StorefrontBacktalk, complete with avatars for all readers. Before we explored this more seriously, we wanted to ask our readers whether we should proceed. Therefore…

…

Near Field Communication (NFC) is running into the exact same kind of tech hurdles that has slowed down RFID, according to a new report from the Venture Development Corp., which cited a lack of supporting infrastructure, standards problems and a “complex ecoysystem of stakeholders.”

VDC “believes that NFC may take root first in niche vertical applications rather than hypervolume consumer applications like contactless payment,” said this RFID Update story.…

The Metro Group’s RFID trial efforts have been well-known, but this is an interesting International Herald-Tribune story discussing some of the privacy debates within Europe on their efforts.

The piece quotes a Metro person as saying that a recent European Union effort to force the tags to be deactivated at POS as the kiss of death for consumer-facing RFID. “If we have to deactivate at the check-out, then the technology is going to stay within the logistics process – to say where is a box or where is the pallet in the distribution center. It won’t come on consumer items. They’re going to kill the technology with that.”…

The reality is, though, that brands still matter very much. Those brands come with all of the good and the not-so-good reputations of that retailer. Will Wal-Mart The Usurper's reputation be tamed with a friendly and candid blog face? Read more...

First up was a gift card exchange site called Leverage. Leverage didn't offer to make good on the Sharper Image gift cards, but it did offer to make whole any of its own customers who bought Sharper Image gift cards through Leverage's site. That move will cost Leverage "a few thousand dollars," said Leverage CEO Mark Edward Roberts. Read more...