Artificial Intelligence

Visa, Walmart chip away at EMV transaction times for faster checkout
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.
Office Depot gets (virtually) real with customer experience
Office Depot Inc. is turning to virtual reality (VR) to enhance how products are displayed and merchandised in its stores.

The retailer is leveraging the ShopperMX online 3D VR platform from InContext Solutions to create engaging in-store experiences that provide customers with hyper-realistic virtual simulations. This may include virtually enhanced signage and product displays, as well as entirely new store concepts.

Google makes mobile move ahead of holidays

Retailers will have a new friction-free way to convert shoppers into buyers this holiday season as Google expects buy button functionality piloted last year to be broadly available by the fourth quarter.
5 reasons Facebook will have a major impact on CRM

Facebook has been getting a lot of attention for recent updates which make it more of a direct customer engagement tool. The attention is deserved, as Facebook is on its way to becoming a vitally important CRM platform. Here are five reasons why. 1. Everyone is doing it
Is Amazon Business a threat to Staples/Office Depot?

A ruling in the dispute between the Federal Trade Commission and Staples could hinge on whether the judge in the case is an Amazon Prime member who appreciates the online giant’s disruptive business model and potential to impact the business-to-business marketplace.
Amazon Business ready to rule B-to-B world

A ruling in the dispute between the Federal Trade Commission and Staples could hinge on whether the judge in the case is an Amazon Prime member who appreciates the online giant’s disruptive business model and potential to impact the business-to-business marketplace.
TechBytes: Five reasons Facebook will have a major impact on CRM

Facebook has been getting a lot of attention for recent updates which make it more of a direct customer engagement tool. The attention is deserved, because Facebook is on its way to becoming a vitally important CRM platform. Here are five reasons why.

Everyone is doing it
eBay brings better offers to the surface

Online retail platform eBay wants to ensure consumers can quickly find the most relevant items at the best prices. eBay is unveiling several types of new browsing modules and approaches to surfacing goods that go beyond traditional keyword search results. The new modules take advantage of structured data that is now foundational on the eBay platform.
Facebook wants to support your customer engagement

Retailers have long been interacting with customers via Facebook, but the social network is making a big push to become a full-fledged CRM platform.

Among the announcements Facebook made at its F8 developers conference this week was a beta release of its Messenger chat platform with bots and a new Send/Receive application programming interface (API).
DirectBuy sees opportunity for digital transformation

Merrillville, Indiana-based membership buying club DirectBuy is hoping mobile visual search capability will help spur growth beyond its 25 brick-and-mortar stores.

“It seems that more members, instead of going to club locations, are browsing and shopping completely online,” Ted Fay, senior director of digital marketing and e-commerce at DirectBuy, said in an interview with Chain Store Age. “We see this as an opportunity to grow our membership base and go places we don’t have a brick-and-mortar store.”
Report: Amazon’s Bezos not afraid of failure

Amazon is the best place in the world to fail—that’s just one of the insights and observations in CEO Jeff Bezos’ annual letter to shareholders.
1-800-Flowers.com plants seeds of seamless consistency

Specialty retailer 1-800-Flowers.com operates across several banners and channels, and is trying to present as unified a customer experience as possible.

1-800-Flowers has chosen the IBM Commerce on Cloud solution to ease the process of conducting transactions across all its brands, including Harry & David, Wolferman’s and Fannie May. The platform will also help deliver a seamless customer experience across the Web, mobile and call center channels.