Evan Schuman

Visa recently sent a confidential memo to selected business partners advising them of a potentially major security threat involving Fujitsu POS software. We all know this because the memo was leaked to the Wall Street Journal, which prompted tons of media—including eWEEK, of course—to cover the story. The culprit seemed to be a tracer testing […]

Like every major sales and communications advance that preceded it, e-commerces 12-year existence has moved along in phases, as it slowly abandoned earlier methods to accept the new reality. Offline and online brands were initially kept distinct, then they were awkwardly merged. Initial e-commerce efforts were flashy brochure sites, with rudimentary shopping carts and checkout […]

It was apparently a coincidence that two of the biggest names in contactless payment today, Exxon Mobils Speedpass and credit card leader Visa, both announced changes to their contactless payment system on the same day last week. The changes were definitely minor tweaks, with Exxon Mobil deploying a much faster way to sign up for […]

With more home deliveries and installations, retailers and restaurants are facing the point-of-sale challenge of verifying payments away from the POS while paying higher credit card fees for card-not-present purchases. Commerciant, a Houston-based wireless paying processing house, is coming to the aid of those merchants with the introduction of a combination unit that wirelessly authenticates […]

A commonly used testing utility is apparently behind the security alert that Visa issued late last week claiming Fujitsu retail point-of-sale software may have a problem. Shortly after Visa—the owner of the worlds largest electronic payments network—issued an alert warning retailers about security problems with POS software issued by Fujitsu Transaction Solutions, Fujitsu officials said […]

The recent report of a 5 percent increase in North American Point of Sale purchases last year was much lower than had been expected, and is a sign of delayed retail IT purchases during a year of substantial retail software consolidation, according to IHL Consulting Group, the retail research house that issued the report the […]

In most hospitals today, signs are posted banning cell phones because they could interfere with hospital equipment. Many years ago, that was actually true. But improvements in cell phones in the last decade have made the interference non-existent today, unless someone is using a very old first-generation cell phone. So why are these bans still […]

When Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston needed to find a better way to track emergency room patients, they wanted to use RFID. But they ran into a wall. Literally. It seems that the radio frequency approach was able to triangulate the position of patients by distance, but not by room. It wouldnt recognize walls […]

Analysts are giving Microsoft credit for doing better than expected in the retail POS (point of sale) space as it announces March 8 a new version that adds native support for several common peripherals. The significance of the new support for the devices—including coin dispenser, keylock, MICR (magnetic ink character recognition), POS power, scale, signature […]

Wal-Mart isnt the only major early RFID backer to have cooled its RFID enthusiasm lately. One of the most anticipated RFID trials was at the Department of Homeland Security, which last year made a move to use super-beefed-up RFID devices track all U.S. ports of entry. /zimages/2/28571.gifRead more here about why RFIDs progression has been […]

RFID was supposed to revolutionize the supply chain and—by mid-2006—dominate most aspects of product handling within retail and manufacturing. Today, even the most ardent RFID advocates are conceding that hasnt happened and its quite frankly not even close. There are many reasons why RFIDs progression has been disappointing so far, but the most likely culprit […]

One of the more intriguing movies with a technology theme in the last few decades was a 1983 flick called “WarGames,” starring Matthew Broderick in his second movie. Critics of the movie from the IT community at the time said that the films plot—about a sophisticated war game computer that confused its NORAD masters into […]