Legislative, Regulatory & Legal

National Retail Federation president and CEO Matthew Shay and chief economist Jack Kleinhenz issued a response to the organization’s February jobs report.

“While there are signs of modest momentum in the economy, now is not the time to play partisan politics with the recovery by forcing federal mandates on retailers and small business owners like an increase in the minimum wage,” Shay said. “Such policy decisions could hamper economic growth and actually drive up the unemployment rate.”

Foster City, Calif. – Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. are teaming up to create a new group that will focus on improving payment system security. The group will include banks, credit unions, retailers and initially focus on adoption of EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa)-compliant card technology in the U.S. in advance of the October 2015 liability deadline.

The group will also study tokenization, or the replacement of customer account numbers with unique digital payment codes, and also cooperate with other industry groups.

New Albany, Ohio -- Abercrombie & Fitch Co. and Abercrombie & Fitch Stores, Inc. have offered to pay about $4,000 to one assistant manager for failing to pay proper overtime wages from May 16, 2010 to present, in connection with a lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York. Abercrombie agreed to pay the assistant manager's attorney's fees and court costs to be determined by the court.

Washington, D.C. - The National Retail Federation has submitted an official statement for a hearing on data security being held by the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, reiterating the retail industry’s commitment to protecting Americans’ financial information.

The National Retail Federation has issued a statement for a hearing on data security being held by the House Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit, reiterating the retail industry’s commitment to protecting Americans’ financial information.

Over this year, four key trends will propel the industry down the path to more efficient payments.

Village Super Market, which operates a chain of 29 supermarkets under the ShopRite name in New Jersey, Maryland and eastern Pennsylvania, saw net income fall 69% during the second quarter, compared to the same period in the prior year, driven in part by flat same-store sales.

Combating fraud at the POS with chip-based payment systems

The data security breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus have put a white-hot fire under the push for the adoption of microchip-based credit-card technology to replace the traditional (and, many would say, backward) U.S. standard of magnetic strip cards. (The latter store unencrypted customer data on magnetic stripes.) Advocates of the chip cards, which store encrypted customer data on embedded microchips, say their use minimize the risk of data breaches at the POS.