Omnichannel

New York City -- A new global standard for retail payments designed to help exchange data between payment terminals and POS terminals and support new payment technologies has been released by the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) and EPASOrg, which sets card payment standards in Europe.

New York City -- According to a survey released Tuesday by the NRF Foundation and American Express, Amazon.com has the best customer service among U.S. retailers.

The seventh annual Customers’ Choice survey, conducted by BIGinsight and polling 9,374 shoppers, saw the same group of retailers occupy the Top 10 spots in the poll, with some place-switching.

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores announced that Neil Ashe, 44, is the new president and CEO of the company's global e-commerce business, effective Jan. 16.

Ashe was most recently president of CBS Interactive, where he led all online properties and also drove development of new ways to distribute programming produced by the media giant and its subsidiaries.

Ashe is replacing Eduardo Castro-Wright, who announced his retirement in September and will assist in the transition.

By Jill Puleri, [email protected]

The recently concluded holiday season was a happy one for most retailers, thanks in part to a recovering economy, heightened consumer confidence and no debilitating weekend snowstorms.

Oh, and wide acceptance of technology gadgets and experiences may have helped a bit, too.

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — CVS/pharmacy's ExtraCare Rewards program now enables ExtraCare cardholders to send their quarterly ExtraBucks Rewards to their ExtraCare cards, eliminating the need for shoppers to carry paper rewards into their local CVS/pharmacy.

By Kiran Kumar MN, [email protected]

DULUTH, Ga. — NCR announced Monday the introduction of a point-of-sale system that will allow independent retailers to manage transactions, track sales and inventory, process credit cards and market to customers on both touch-screen terminals and Apple mobile devices.

The system is a cloud-based platform that NCR said would give independent retailers a multichannel "sell anywhere" capability.

Parsippany, N.J. -- Cornell-Mayo Associates said Monday that Saks Fifth Avenue is piloting its Omniexpress mobile POS application for the iPod at two Saks Fifth Avenue OFF 5th stores.

The pilot is underway at stores in Woodbury Commons, N.Y. and Bergen, N.J., with four iPods in each store. Saks plans to pilot the Omniexpress mobile POS application for the iPod in its Saks Fifth Avenue stores later this month as well as begin the rollout to additional Off 5th and Saks Fifth Avenue stores in spring 2012.