Apple, Inc.

Another retailer is embracing Apple Pay as an option for customers who want an easy, secure and private way to pay.

Cupertino, Calif. – Apple Inc. is enacting a number of significant enhancements to its Apple Pay mobile payment app, including adding support for rewards programs and store-issued credit and debit cards. During a June 8 keynote address at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Jennifer Bailey, VP of Apple Pay, said that retailers, including Dunkin' Donuts, Walgreens, Wegmans, and Kohl's, will support the new reward card functionality.

On Thursday, Google introduced Android Pay, which will power in-app and tap-to-pay purchases on mobile devices. Here are some comments from Pat Dermody, president of Retale, a location-based mobile platform connecting shoppers with their favorite local retailers, on the new feature:

By Jeff Trachsel

Showrooming has plagued brick-and-mortar retailers for years, with e-commerce quickly chipping away at in-store sales. Recently however, experts report the rising trend is actually the reverse - shoppers are now exploring options online before buying in-store. According to a 2014 report from BI Intelligence, reverse showrooming, or webrooming, is actually more common among U.S. consumers, with 69% of consumers researching online before transacting in-store.

Toronto – Shoppers Drug Mart Corp. is providing members of its Shoppers Optimum loyalty program with My Optimum. My Rewards, a new personalized digital experience. The new digital platform includes an enhanced Shoppers Drug Mart app and a digital Optimum card.

Optimum members will now receive personalized offers and points via their mobile device, email or the Web, and can load them to their digital or plastic Optimum card. They can also scan their digital Optimum card directly from their smartphone to earn and redeem points.

The seminal digital event that occurred in the year 2007 was the introduction of the first iPhone, but there was another noteworthy development that year involving Walmart e-commerce.

A few months after the iPhone made headlines, Walmart rolled out its buy online, pick up in store service branded as Site to Store and helped give meaning to the word omnichannel. In digital terms, 2007 was eons ago.

We live in interesting times when it comes to all the ways we can pay and complete purchases, times when you can now order food for delivery without ever leaving your search engine. More convenient and secure ways of making payments are advancing on a number of interesting fronts, including computer chip enabled EMV credit and debit cards that are soon to replace magnetic stripe cards in the United States, and mobile phone-based digital wallets like Apple Pay and CurrentC (not to mention the digital currency bitcoin, which admittedly we’re pulling for).

A new wave of consumers is quickly becoming the most powerful economic force in retail, and it is causing retailers to refine plans on how to meet the needs of this new generation.

While some retailers may see Millennials as a unique group that forces massive change, GameStop sees them as well-informed, independent consumers who are causing us to rise to an even higher level of service.

By Brian Ehrig

The U.S. dollar has risen by more than 20% against the other major currencies over the last year, buoyed by a respectable if not torrid economic recovery and sinking oil prices, among other factors. That could be a breath of fresh air for U.S. shoppers with a taste for imported goods. For global mega-brands like PVH, Microsoft and Coach, however, the implications are closer to a gathering storm.