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I am a reluctant Costco shopper. My wife is one of the many customers who really love the chain. Me... not so much. Seriously -- someone should wake up Costco's top officials to the need to focus on their customers. After all, it's the customers who make Costco successful. When my family owned lots ...

Apple announced a raft of new services, including original TV programming and news and magazine offerings, at an event held at the Steve Jobs Theater in Cupertino, California. The Apple TV+ service, which will launch in the fall, already has a number of high-profile shows in its lineup, including Am...

E-commerce fraud is an ongoing problem for online merchants and credit card companies. It has been growing at twice the rate of e-commerce sales. Identity theft traditionally has been one of the most common sources of e-commerce fraud, but online merchants lately have been suffering more from charge...

Supermarket uber-chain The Kroger Co. has launched Kroger Ship, a direct-to-consumer e-commerce platform. Ship debuted in four markets: Cincinnati; Houston; Louisville, Kentucky; and Nashville, Tennessee. The service will be rolled out to additional markets over the next few months. During the firs...

Amazon this week expanded its discounted Prime membership program, already available to EBT card holders, to include Medicaid recipients. Eligible customers can become Prime members for $5.99 a month, less than half the regular $12.99 monthly fee. The move -- another step in Amazon's efforts to reac...

Apple has unveiled new features that will become available when iOS 11.3 is released this spring. The company released the developer preview to members of the iOS Developer Program, and a public beta of the update is expected shortly. The update will provide new ways to experience augmented reality ...

Since mobile computing put an end to the good old days when IT departments had absolute control over software deployed in the enterprise, there's been a rise in employees' use of third-party applications -- a rise that poses security risks to corporate environments. That is one of the findings in a ...

Who is leading the mobile payment race? There are several players competing today. PayPal started the revolution 15 years ago, and Apple Pay, Android Pay and Samsung Pay have joined the fray. Many newcomers are entering this space on a regular basis. The traditional money space has undergone change ...

Amazon has applied for a patent for selfie-based authentication for online purchases, according to a patent application published last week. Using the technology, a prospective purchaser would take a selfie, and the image would be authenticated against an image database using facial recognition soft...

Google on Wednesday announced that it has begun testing an app dubbed "Hands Free," which allows Android and iOS smartphone users to make purchases via their devices without taking them out of their pockets or purses. Early adopters in Silicon Valley can use the payment system at a small number of M...

Samsung on Wednesday unveiled the Family Hub Refrigerator at CES, ongoing in Las Vegas through Saturday. The new refrigerator sports a 21.5-inch full HD LCD screen on the upper right outside door, which doubles as a communications center. The screen lets users post, share and update calendars, as we...

The Federal Trade Commission and Wyndham Worldwide this month reached a settlement over allegations the company violated federal law regarding the protection of customer records. The settlement could have a significant impact on e-commerce in that it ended a major legal challenge to the FTC's extens...

For retailers that do not yet accept EMV cards -- credit and debit cards with chips embedded in them -- a spine-tingling deadline arrived last week. Liability for any payment fraud that results from acceptance of old-school plastic shifted to them. The magnetic chips in EMV cards will reduce in-stor...

Google on Wednesday released a revamped version of Google Wallet to keep the app alive following its imminent transformation into Android Pay, which began rolling out on Thursday. Google Wallet (New) also has a few capabilities that aren't available in the about-to-be-promoted version. The original ...