Convenience Stores

A leading payment card issuer and the world’s largest discount retailer are both launching efforts to reduce how long customers have to wait to check out with EMV-compliant payment cards.

Visa Inc. is rolling out a technology enhancement designed to optimize EMV chip card processing and speed up checkout times. The new solution, called Quick Chip for EMV, streamlines the processing of chip card transactions to enable customers to dip and remove their EMV chip card from the terminal, typically in two seconds or less, without waiting for the transaction to be finalized.

Consumers are using their mobile devices to shop in ways that have an impact both in-store and online.

Analysis of daily surveys of recent online buyers by Hayley Silver, VP of Bizrate Insights, a division of Connexity, shows that online purchases on a mobile device as a percent of online orders have been growing and maintaining market share since late 2014. However, nearly 12% of all online shoppers still don’t use their mobile device to shop at all.

Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz recently touched down at Target Corp. headquarters in Minneapolis as part of Target’s series of “innovation speakers.” “With Starbucks, I dreamed of building a national brand and different kind of company, achieving balance between profit and conscience, bringing people along on the journey, and impacting the communities we serve,” Schultz said. “The kind of company my parents never got the chance to work for.

It was probably inevitable that somebody at some point would challenge the legality of the Oct. 1, 2015 EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) liability shift.

A controversial labor practice employed by some retailers is coming under increased scrutiny by U.S.regulators.  

Both the volume of and monetary losses caused by fraudulent transactions have sharply increased in the past year.   According to the “2016 True Cost of Fraud Report” from LexisNexis Risk Solutions, the monthly average of fraudulent transactions has increased 32% to 206 from 156 in 2015. In addition, the monthly average of prevented fraudulent transactions has risen 33% to 236 from 177.  

Publix, Chick-fil-A, Amazon.com, H-E-B, and BJ's Wholesale Club are the nation’s most trusted retailers, according to an annual survey by the Temkin Group.

The “2016 Temkin Trust Ratings,” based on a study of 10,000 U.S consumers, benchmarks the level of trust that consumers have with 294 companies across 20 industries.

Publix Super Markets added its soon-to-be CEO, current CFO and a retired Deloitte executive to its board of directors when the Southeast’s leading food retailer held its annual stockholders meeting on April 12.

Publix president Todd Jones, CFO David Phillips and retired Deloitte executive Jessica Blume were elected to the board of the $32.4 billion retailer.