By Ben Carsley
Welcome to Day One of PYMNTS.com’s NRF Recap: a comprehensive look at all the most important announcements and coolest stories from the NRF’s Retails’ BIG Show in New York City.
PYMNTS.com will get a first-hand look at the conference on Tuesday and Wednesday, but monitored all the NRF news from afar on Monday, including some changes to NRF’s leadership, a big PayPal announcement, new VeriFone integration and more.
Think we should have covered another big story? Want to share a cool product or feature you saw with us? Let me know in the comments below!
Lundgren Out, Sadove In As NRF Chairman
The NRF held a Board of Directors meeting on Sunday during the earliest part of Retail’s BIG Show, and elected Saks Inc. Chairman and CEO Stephen I. Sadove as its next chairman for both the NRF Board of Directors and the NRF’s Executive Committee. Sadove will succeed Terry J. Lundgren, chairman, president and CEO of Macy’s.
Kip Tindell, CEO and Chairman of The Container Store, will serve as first vice chairman of the Board and treasurer and chairman of the Finance Committee. HSNi CEO Mindy Grossman will take over as second vice chair of the Board and as secretary. Matthew Shay will remain the NRF President and CEO.
Board members typically serve two-year terms.
PayPal Adds 23 Partners, Gets Creative With Jamba Juice
One of the biggest announcements to come form Day 1 of NRF 2013 was made via PayPal, which made known its 23 new retailers that have signed on to accept PayPal in their stores. Big names such as RadioShack, Abercrombie & Fitch, Home Depot, JC Penny, Office Depot and Toys “R” Us dot the list, with two more retailers to be publically revealed soon.
PayPal now says it’s accepted at 18,000 retail locations in the U.S. through a blog post by Don Kingsborough, VP, Retail Services.
In a separate announcement, PayPal also declared that they’re testing an order-ahead feature with Jamba Juice in Emeryville, CA. The feature will be available for iPhone users, who can order, make special requests and schedule pick-up times directly from their smartphones. In the post, Hill Ferguson, VP of Global Product, said that more order-ahead locations will follow Emeryville in 2013.
VeriFone’s iPad Mini Design
VeriFone revealed its “comprehensive suite of payments solutions” yesterday, with perhaps the most interesting development being the first payment acceptance solution to work with the iPad mini. The new PAYware Mobile tablet platform also supports magstripe EMV and NFC payments, and comes with a 2D bar code imager and PIN pad as well.
The company today plans to hold a product demo with Isis, which PYMNTS.com will be sure to check out.
Think&Go Rolls Out NFC Shopping, Version 4
Think&Go is a retail company that took advantage of the NRF tradeshow to launch Version 4 of its NFC Shopping system. As NFC World notes, the service comes with a mobile app for Android and iOS devices and is compatible with NFC, QR code, barcode and image recognition functionality.
For retailers who want to try the system, Think&Go is offering a $2,000 one-time fee that will provide merchants with 100 NFC tags and 100 products for 100 days. The company says the system only takes about a day to set up.
NRF’s 2012 Annual Report
NRF sent out a pretty interesting recap of the year 2012 with interactive monthly tabs, some impressive feedback statistics and a video recap of the show, which you can see below. It’s an excellent primer for anyone looking for a little background before they hit the tradeshow, and I know we’ll be keeping it on hand as we reference the changes we’re going to see in 2013.
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