Evan Schuman

After private credit card data from some 46 million consumers fell into the hands of cyber-thieves in the largest retail data breach ever, TJX has settled all of the consumer lawsuits resulting from the breach by paying $6.5 million in attorney fees and offering consumers some programs aimed at compensating those directly impacted. The details […]

Historically, any major communications or commerce channel is only remembered after the industry agrees on one (or perhaps two) direction. Think back to the early days of the Web. Ask most people when the Web began, and theyll typically say 1994 or 1995. In truth, Tim Berners-Lee finalized it in 1990, and working systems were […]

With Borders just seven months away from having to fly on its own without Amazon.com, the nations second-largest bookseller has quietly launched its beta site. When Borders announced in March that it was ending its agreement with Amazon—where Borders all but surrendered its online presence to Amazon—its executives outlined an unusually aggressive plan to turn […]

McDonalds is experimenting with the ultimate line-buster in South Korea, where customers purchase food on their cell phones, which then ring when the order is ready. But this trial is much more an RFID effort than a traditional mobile experiment. Most of the phones communications capabilities and its display are barely used, with customers having […]

One of the Miami residents charged with trying to sell stolen TJX credit card data has been sentenced to five years in prison and ordered to pay $600,000 in restitution, the Florida Attorney General announced Thursday. Irving Escobar and several others were charged with using counterfeit credit cards that they manufactured using the stolen data […]

A few years ago, retail biometrics had what seemed to be a very bright future. They promised superior security and a permanent CRM association. If that customer switched credit cards, moved to another state, changed their name and changed cell phone companies, the fingerprint would still allow all purchases to be associated with an individual […]

With all of the PCI and data breach talk these days, its easy for retailers of all sizes to be on edge. Although its undeniable that merchants of all sizes need to protect themselves, different issues threaten Wal-Mart and Phils Bait Shop. Larger retailers can be seen as the better targets in the Willy Sutton […]

When NEC issued its statement in Tokyo Sept. 6 that it developed the worlds first RFID device that can read and write tag data in the three most common RFID frequencies, it gave a boost for todays RFID deployments. But NECs focus was not on the new product as much as its pledge to imminently […]

Consumers spent more than $137 billion in retail self-checkout in 2006, with increased self-checkout use in do-it-yourself stores, supercenters and warehouse clubs mostly responsible, according to an IHL study released Sept. 6. Thats 24 percent more than was checked out by consumers in 2005, IHL said. The study also reported that consumer resistance to the […]

As a group, humans are a tough audience. Cruelly and quixotically, the more difficult and massive the task, the quicker we are to point out the shortcomings rather than praise the accomplishments. In retail technology today, there are few efforts more monumental and difficult than attempts to regulate credit card security. The Payment Card Industry […]