Payment Options

Amazon.com's cashier-free grocery store of the future is coming to San Francisco and Chicago. The company is expanding its experimental Amazon Go store to the two cities, but didn't say when they would open. It has posted job listings for store managers in the cities on its site, which were first noticed by the Seattle…

The subscription economy brings the need for a completely different approach to building and expanding a business. Driven by changes in purchasing behavior and consumer preference, the subscription economy is in full effect. The industry has grown 200 percent annually since 2011, and in 2017, subscription businesses attracted more than 11 million U.S. subscribers. Looking…

Amazon.com is reportedly offering discounted credit card fees to retailers that adopt Amazon Pay as an option for their customers, according to people with knowledge of the matter who spoke to Bloomberg. The Bloomberg report said that Amazon has offered the discounts to several smaller sellers with higher credit card fees than Amazon, which can negotiate…

Sears and Kmart announced today that they are expanding their LEASE IT program online, thereby becoming the only national full-service retailer to offer a full assortment of products to lease both online and in-store. The LEASE IT payment option, originally launched in-store at Sears and Kmart in 2012, enables shoppers who don't qualify for or…

Innovations in mobile and digital wallets over recent years have resulted in a proliferation of wallet models and solutions, all intended to improve customer convenience, leverage data, lessen friction or lower the cost of payments. The potential for increased growth of digital commerce is evidenced by the number of brick-and-mortar retailers that have introduced mobile…

A recent article on Total Retail by Mark Ryski titled Why Amazon Go is a ‘No-Go’ for Most Retailers caught my attention. Ryski’s article postulated that grab-and-go technologies would be too expensive and complex to implement for most retailers, and used Whole Foods’ footprint (average of 39,000 square feet) as an example. The issue I…

Innovations in mobile and digital wallets over recent years have resulted in a proliferation of wallet models and solutions, all intended to improve consumer convenience, leverage data, lessen friction or lower the cost of payments. Merchants and issuers looking to understand the key factors and considerations for developing a mobile or digital wallet strategy can find guidance in a new U.S. Payments Forum resource, Mobile and Digital Wallets: U.S. Landscape and Strategic Considerations for Merchants and Financial Institutions.

Google announced yesterday a new service designed to help retailers take on Amazon — and give Google a cut of their sales in the process. The service, Shopping Actions (formerly known as Google Express), gives consumers an easy way to shop for retailers’ products on the Google Assistant app and search via Google Search with…

Cryptocurrency may be the future of money, but it’s a tough sell in the retail world right now, and for good reason. The most familiar cryptocurrency unit, bitcoin, has been on a roller-coaster ride for the past few months, rising to a peak value near $20,000 in December 2017 before crashing below $6,000 in early…

As a leader in the “ready to assemble” cabinetry industry, The RTA Store has withstood the test of time by creating strong customer loyalty. The products that The RTA Store sells typically aren’t impulse purchases. Rather, buying cabinetry is often viewed as an expensive and time-consuming part of creating and maintaining a household. Customers, who…