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POS SuppliesBarcode + Auto ID Readers

Complete Systems

Label software

Receipt Printers

Barcode Printers

Credit Card Readers

Other Hardware

Touchscreens

Cash Drawers

Keyboards

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POS Supplies

Point of Sale Blog

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Several months ago, we wrote about an anti-shoplifting technology by Stoplift.  StopLift Checkout Vision Systems’ Scan-It-All™ video recognition technology has now detected a very impressive 500,000 scan avoidance incidences at both the manned and self-checkout.

Working with retailers on four continents, including Tesco in the UK, StopLift’s scan avoidance technology has just confirmed more than half a million incidents at thousands of checkouts in chains across the U.S. and around the world.

These incidents include “sweethearting”, when cashiers pretend to scan merchandise but deliberately bypass the scanner, thus not charging the customer for the merchandise.  The customer is often a friend, family member or fellow employee working in tandem with the cashier.

 They also include a 500% higher rate of scan avoidance in self-checkout.

 “Our technology has found that shoplifting is as much as five times more likely to happen in the self-checkout lane,” said Malay Kundu, Founder and CEO of StopLift.  “Some retailers are reexamining the ROI of self-checkouts.

 “Retailers always suspected that self-checkouts would be highly prone to scan-avoidance, and our technology has certainly found this to be the case,” he said.  “Furthermore, using the incidents detected from their own stores, retailers are now able to train staff on the signals indicating when customers are either having problems using the self-checkout or are exhibiting suspicious behavior.”

 StopLift’s Scan-It-All system finds any incidents of scan-avoidance, where merchandise is not scanned or rung up before being given to the customer.  This includes incidents which may be due to mistakes by the cashier or customer as well as items left in the shopping cart at both manned and self-checkout.

To watch real scan avoidance incidents – including self-checkout – tracked by StopLift, visit www.StopLift.com, where you will also see the ABC World News with Diane Sawyer story featuring StopLift and self-checkout theft.

As soon as a scan avoidance incident occurs, StopLift, which constantly monitors 100% of the security video, flags the transaction as suspicious.  It quickly reports the incident, identifying the cashier or customer and the date and time of the theft.

 Scan-It-All works with existing off-the-shelf overhead cameras.  No special camera equipment needs to be purchased or installed, and no changes have to be made to the checkout.

 StopLift’s patented computer vision technology visually determines what occurs during each and every transaction to immediately identify fraud at the checkout.  Dishonest associates are identified on the basis of video evidence the very first time they conduct a fraudulent transaction, rather than months or even years down the road, significantly reducing inventory shrinkage, deterring future theft, and boosting profitability.  Customers are identified at the self-checkout.

The technology eliminates costly, time-consuming human review of video, drastically reduces and deters fraud at the checkout, and significantly improves profitability, Kundu said.  Rather than take a one-size-fits-all approach, StopLift develops targeted applications to address the specific needs of retailers from different sectors including general merchandise, grocery, and specialty retail.

 

 

 

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Durango, CO. – (May 15, 2012) – Mercury Payment Systems® today announced the acquisition of Sundrop® Mobile, a pioneer in mobile and social loyalty marketing. It marks Mercury’s first acquisition since its founding in 2001, as well as the first card-less mobile loyalty program integrated with payment processing.

“Sundrop’s forward-thinking loyalty product is seamlessly integrated to point-of -sale (POS) systems, making it a perfect match for Mercury,” said Matt Taylor, Chief Executive Officer. “Mercury has been at the forefront of POS-integrated payments acceptance, and our technology is now built into more than 500 systems. With this acquisition, Mercury will leverage our extensive developer channel presence to lead the way in integrated POS mobile and social marketing.”

Following the integration of Sundrop’s operations and technology, Mercury’s POS partner network will begin offering their merchant customers an innovative mobile loyalty solution that is also integrated with Mercury’s secure payment processing platform.

“Most importantly, this technology blend will help merchants increase profitability with a mobile loyalty program that makes it easy to engage and reward their best customers,” Taylor said.

“Combining Sundrop’s technology with Mercury’s solid execution and strategic vision is an obvious next-step for us in bringing our services immediately to scale,” said Travis Priest, Chief Executive Officer of Sundrop Mobile. Priest will be joining Mercury as Vice President of Loyalty, where he will lead Mercury’s strategy and execution in this space.

Beta POS integrations of the new Mercury loyalty product are underway. Full details will be released at the Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) show, RetailNOW, in late July in Las Vegas. For information, contact Mercury at 800-846-4472..

About Sundrop

Sundrop Mobile is a mobile marketing and loyalty solutions provider pioneering the “Social POS.” Sundrop’s “card-less” mobile loyalty program, uses a consumer’s mobile number as their "loyalty card," text messaging with email for data collection and communication, and seamlessly integrates social media and location-based services. Sundrop introduces merchants to their customers by helping merchants rapidly build large, opt-in customer databases at the point of sale and then enables merchants to market to these customers with targeted SMS text, email, voice, and social media communications while fully measuring the ROI of every campaign. www.sundropmobile.com

About Mercury Payment Systems

Mercury Payment Systems is one of the fastest-growing payment processing companies in North America. Mercury is a trusted, award-winning channel partner to over 500 point-of-sale (POS) Independent Software Vendors and 2,500 POS Value Added Resellers, delivering secure and reliable integrated payments and visionary technology leadership to the industry. Mercury is pioneering the “Social POS,” empowering its merchants to identify, acquire and retain customers through unique engagement and closed-loop measurement using Mercury’s patent-pending SaaS mobile loyalty platform. www.mercurypay.com

 

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   Stopping at Macy's today for a new bathing suit offered a pleasant surprise, or almost, at checkout.   After I swiped my credit card through the terminal,  I was prompted to enter my email address to receive a digital receipt. WOW - way for a retailer to make my day!!!   After dissing their POS system and procedures in a previous blog (Pernicious Point of Sale Procedure Pains Purchaser), I thought - this is a big step for Macy's,  they're getting green!! Fantastic. 

      The elation lasted about fifteen seconds, or almost as long as Kim Kardashian's marriage, as the cashier handed me a printed receipt.  My face fell.  Hmmm, I thought - well, maybe next time the receipt will be purely digital, like the Apple store?  I asked the cashier.  No, she shook her head, the receipts always print.  (Big sigh).   

    Ahhh well, maybe Macy's is working up to that.     How about it, Macy's IT?   Almost ready to take that bold step?  Or, how about using that little terminal to allow me to skip the printed receipt?  You know... ask me...  "Our records indicated you have signed up to receive digital receipts - would you like a printed copy anyway? (Y/N) "     I mean, like,  get wild.  Have a few beers at lunch, walk back to the computer,  sit down at the programming keyboard and really cut loose!  Get in touch with your inner POS programming guru! 

   I probably shouldn't bitch.  The entire transaction took under a minute, and that alone was a pleasant surprise after my last experience. 

    Footnote: As I was walking to my car I checked my email and there it was - a digital receipt.   Exactly 42 minutes later though, a second email came from Macy's with an advertisement and a 15% discount on my next purchase over $100.    Well, that didn't take too long. Memo to the Marketing department -  Want to keep the right to email me?    About once a month is all I want to hear from you!  I unsubscribed at Nordstroms and Jos A. Bank because they emailed me too often - so don't push it.  I will unsubscribe if you abuse your emailing privileges.  Consider yourselves warned! 


(BTW, nice bathing suit.  However, I'll spare readers a picture of me in it.)  

 

 

 

 

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O2,  a UK telecommunications company with presence through out much of Europe, has introduced a new program that provides unlimited mobile voice and text, and up to 1 gig a month of data transfer.   O2 is a part of Telefónica UK, who employs around 11,000 people in the UK and has 450 retail stores - which in turn, is part of Telefónica Europe plc, a business division of Telefónica S.A. which uses O2 as its commercial brand in the UK, Ireland, Slovakia, Germany and the Czech Republic, and has 58.1 million customers across these markets. 

The recent launch of On & On for the mobile business market compliments O2’s launch of On & On in the consumer market. It includes the small business sector as many of the UK small businesses are under ongoing pressure to keep mobile costs low and manage spending, against a tough economic backdrop. And naturally, businesses want good value for money, but don’t want to be restrained by confusing limits and additional costs. On & On will help with their mobile bills, by simplifying their contracts and removing restrictions. This will allow small companies to concentrate on what really matters – running, developing and making a success of their business.

Among O2's other acheivements:

O2’s UK 3G (HSPA+ 900 / 2100 MHz) network currently provides voice and high speed mobile data services to over 84% of the UK population at speeds of up to 14.4Mbp and 21Mbps in major cities.


O2 was the first UK operator to deploy a 4G/LTE trial network which has demonstrated peak speeds of over 100Mbps to a mobile device.

 

Click here for more information about O2 and its mobile offerings.

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Hampshire, UK – 16th April 2012:  A new report from Juniper Research has found that the number of consumers using mobile handsets to make P2P (Person to Person) domestic money transfers will reach 340 million by 2016, up from 84 million last year.

Juniper’s new ‘Mobile Money Transfer & Remittances’ study found that following the success of Safaricom’s MPESA service in Kenya, both network operators and financial service providers in developing markets are increasingly using mobile distribution mechanisms as a means of enabling unbanked/underbanked consumers to access financial services for the first time.

As the report observed, such services provide MNOs faced with flatlining revenues from voice and data services with the opportunity to deliver a service which can not only deliver a significant uplift to ARPU but which also acts as a customer retention tool. For financial service providers, they offer the potential of attracting new customers with the potential of subsequently upselling more sophisticated products such as insurance and savings accounts.

Regulatory requirements can constrain growth

However, the report cautioned that the success of money transfer services was dependent upon incumbent regulatory regimes being conducive to service deployments. Furthermore, it added that while the complexity of regulation can slow down service deployment, its requirements can also act as a brake on service adoption.

According to report author Dr Windsor Holden, “Our primary interviews confirmed that in developing countries with previously unbanked customers, it is essential that the customer sign up process takes only a short time. Customers are very easily discouraged from subscribing to services by overbearing KYC (Know Your Customer) requirements, particularly if this is their first contact with a financial service.”

Other findings from the report include:

The average size of a domestic remittance transaction via mobile payments was $22 in 2011.  To boost initial service adoption and enable critical mass, providers should allow unregistered users to receive remittances.Lack of money transfer service interoperability continues to act as hurdle to adoption.

The whitepaper,Moving Money Via Mobile”, is available to download from the Juniper website together with further details of the full report, “Mobile Money Transfer & Remittances: Business Models & Monetisation Opportunities”.

Juniper Research provides research and analytical services to the global hi-tech communications sector, providing consultancy, analyst reports and industry commentary.

For further details please contact Jess Hanslip, Press Relations

T: +44(0)1256 830001

E: jess.hanslip@juniperresearch.com

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