retailer

Ecommerce giant eBay announced that it completed the acquisition of GSI Commerce reported back in March. eBay has purchased all outstanding shares of GSI at $29.25 pher share in cash, adding up to about $2.4 billion.

GSI Commerce will continue to operate as a separate business from eBay, and will be led by Chris Saridakis as its newly appointed president. He will report directly to John Donahoe, eBay’s President and CEO.

IBM is entering the ecommerce industry with its new initiative to help online businesses better service their customers. IBM has launched an ecommerce program that focuses on retail operation integration and analytics.

"Through technology, consumers have gotten much more empowered than they have ever been before," for the retail industry, said Craig Hayman, the general manager of IBM Software Industry Solutions, who heads the new practice.

The world’s largest retail electronic payments network Visa Inc announced the Visa Mobile application for the iPhone. Using the tool iPhone owners will have access to over 50 unique merchant offers ranging from clothing and dining to entertainment. The Visa Mobile application is now available as a free download from the iTunes app store.

As retailers are offering more discounts and deals the number of shoppers wishing to buy "impulse" gifts for themselves or others is on the rise this season. An exclusive survey for Reuters by consumer research firm America's Research Group revealed that about 46% of U.S. consumers have already purchased an "impulse item" this season.

According to 2 similar surveys conducted earlier in November that number rose from 28% and 38%.

RegaloCard announced that Unicomer Group, a leading retailer in Central America and the Dominican Republic, has joined the RegaloCard mobile payments network. Recently, RegaloCard, through its proprietary mobile payments platform and unique business model, has created a new product category the “micro money transfer,” which allows consumers to send instantly and for free as little as $10, directed to specific uses. Among the advantages of the service is that it works with any mobile phone and carrier worldwide and is as easy to use as a prepaid calling card.

S1 has announced that Waitrose, the supermarket chain of the John Lewis Partnership, has gone live with the S1 Retail Payments solution as part of a major point of sale (POS) and payments infrastructure project to enhance payments capabilities across its 227 UK supermarkets.

S1 counts five of the top 10 UK retailers as payments customers.

The selection of S1 followed a thorough vendor evaluation process designed to ensure that the new payments system measured up to Waitrose's high standards of customer service.

The National Supermarkets Association is suing American Express over unfair surcharges it imposes on merchants. The group of 400 independent grocers says that its members have nothing to do but to raise prices on all items because of a surcharge fee imposed by AmEx on retailers.

Thus, when a consumer makes a purchase at the amount of $100 on an American Express credit card and the "merchant discount fee" is 2 percent, American Express bills the customer for $100 and pays the merchant only $98.

Cardlytics and Vesdia are partnering for providing banks with a platform to deliver targeted rewards based on customers' debit, credit and bill-pay transactions, as well as deploy a broad-based rewards strategy that includes online malls and multi-channel marketing.

In the age of accessible information it becomes something usual for businesses to predict behavior of the customers. Visa, the world’s largest credit card network, can predict how likely you are to get a divorce.

American Express added more partners and features in the Membership Rewards® program, which provides Cardmembers with more choice, flexibility and attainable rewards across popular categories, including financial services, travel, shopping, and dining and entertainment.

The program also now offers reward redemptions for as low as 200 points, and has added over 2,000 retail and dining locations, 23 new hotel properties, and much more.

NetSpend has signed a distribution agreement with InComm to provide InComm’s retail partner locations with the opportunity to sell and reload the NetSpend general purpose reloadable debit card.

Now NetSpend cardholders will be able to reload their cards at the 93,000 current locations and at the participating InComm retailers. Cardholders also have access to online bill pay, free direct deposit, free card-to-card transfers and online budgeting and spending tools.

A gift card has typically been the one item that holiday shoppers had to buy at full price. But after a slump in spending on the cards last year, retailers got out the red markers and started slashing. Buy $100 in gift cards for any of eight retailers at Kroger and you pay only $90.
At CVS this week, spend $50 on iTunes gift cards and get a $10 credit to use the next time you shop there.

 Webloyalty.com, a leading online marketing company, has launched its new gift card program. Through this offering, members of Webloyalty’s popular discount programs can receive a 20 percent savings on the purchase of gift cards from the nation’s leading retailers and e-tailers, restaurants and travel and entertainment companies. 

 On Sunday CIT Group, the largest factoring company that finances small and medium size businesses, filed for bankruptcy protection which is viewed by most analysts as a threat to most of its clients putting them in at the end of 2008.

This filing is one of the largest in the history of the US and it will affect 2,000 of retailers and their vendors but not the company's other operating subsidiaries. CIT expects to reduce its total debt by about $10 billion.

 As recession presses many retailers to leave expensive trade outlets many mall owners and other landlords happily receive "pop-up," or temporary, stores who greatly benefit from the tough economic times. These stores - including Calendar Club, Hickory Farms and some Gucci sneaker shops, which are set up to close up – are welcomed by malls who prefer to have 2-3 month tenant rather than no one to fill voids left by the departures of Linens 'n Things, Circuit City and other retailers.