Phil Windley is reporting on his Technometria blog from this week's Internet Retailing conference in Chicago. His first post on the conference reviewed the keynote address by Mike Boylston from JC Penney. His second post reviews the talk by Robert Antall, CEO, Lake West Group, on the new level of competitiveness in e-retailing. Digital Transactions is also reporting from the conference.

MODASolutions has announced that TigerDirect, a retailer of computer hardware and components, is now accepting its SECURE-eBill payment option that allows customers to pay for purchases from their existing online bank accounts.   » Continue Reading

comScore Networks has announced that "consumer online non-travel (retail) spending at U.S. sites during 2006, including the holiday season (November 1, 2006 - December 31, 2006). For the full year 2006, online retail spending reached $102.1 billion, marking a 24-percent increase versus 2005. Online holiday e-commerce accounted for $24.6 billion, up 26 percent versus last year."   » Continue Reading

comScore Networks has released its estimates of consumer online non-travel (retail) spending at U.S. sites for the 2006 holiday season through Tuesday, December 26. According to comScore, "during the first 56 days of the holiday season, total online retail spending reached $23.11 billion, marking a 26-percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005. Sales during the week prior to Christmas (December 18 - December 22, 2006) rose 38 percent versus the corresponding week in 2005. Importantly, year-to-date non-travel e-commerce spending surpassed the $100 billion mark for the first time ever on Saturday, December 23, 2006."   » Continue Reading

Over the last few days, the blogosphere has been chatting about PayPal's Virtual Debit Card offering - as PayPal reports that its current beta test of the new service has been opened up to more users. First offered to beta users last June, the Virtual Debit Card allows PayPal members who are Microsoft Windows Internet Explorer users to make purchases at non-PayPal accepting merchants through the use of a MasterCard number generated automatically by PayPal on the user's behalf. The PayPal Virtual Debit Card cannot be linked to a non-PayPal-issued credit card. Instead, there must be funds in the user's PayPal account or the user has to have provided PayPal with bank account information or signed up for either PayPal Buyer Credit or the PayPal Plus Credit Card. More details on PayPal's FAQ page for beta users and in this BetaNews story on VDC.

James K. Glassman, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, looks at the growth in online retailing and ecommerce - including some results from a survey he helped PayPal conduct earlier this year. "Online sales remain small in relation to total consumer purchases--only about two or three percentage points--but they are gaining tremendous speed while bricks-and-mortar retailers are laboring hard just to run in place."

comScore Networks has released its estimates of consumer online non-travel (retail) spending at U.S. sites for the 2006 holiday season through December 15. During the first 45 days of the holiday season, total online retail spending reached $19.48 billion, marking a 25-percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005.   » Continue Reading

Unisys has announced the results of a new survey concluding that "a majority of U.S. consumers fear their personal information and security will be compromised while shopping online or using online banking services this holiday season, resulting in the potential loss of significant revenue for banking and retail institutions." According to the study, concerns about bank card fraud and identity theft are so high among consumers that nearly one in every two consumers polled has ceased using online personal banking services, as well as telephone and Internet-based shopping, if the transaction requires a credit card number   » Continue Reading

Despite the proliferation of high speed Internet among U.S. homes, most eCommerce shopping happens during work hours, according to CyberSource.   » Continue Reading

Bill Me Later sends along the following news about some interesting holiday shopping trends they've noticed this season.   » Continue Reading

On the Hitwise blog, LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise posts some interesting numbers about traffic to the Toys R Us website vs. competitors. Two weeks ago, she reports that the Toys R Us site was the leading source of traffic to Google Checkout.

The Conference Board and TNS have announced results from the latest edition of The Barometer - finding that consumers are willing to spend more for the holidays, but only if retailers offer free shipping and exclusive online incentives, They also report that the most frustrating aspects of shopping online for consumers are shipping charges, not being able to physically handle merchandise, and having to give out credit card information.   » Continue Reading

VeriSign has announced a suite of new Digital Brand and Fraud Protection services designed to "help organizations detect, prioritize and rapidly respond to suspicious activities on Web sites, blogs, online user communities, and other sources that can damage brand equity and consumer confidence."   » Continue Reading

comScore Networks has released an update on European online holiday shopping activity in the U.K., France and Germany - reporting that the week ending 3 December was the most active cyber shopping week to date in both the U.K. and Germany, with visits to secure web pages up 69 and 72 percent, respectively, versus the pre-holiday shopping period from 28 August - 29 October. During this week, France saw a 79 percent increase versus the pre-holiday shopping period.   » Continue Reading

Business Week's Jeffrey Gangemi interviews cybersecurity consultant Howard Schmidt (former White House cybersecurity adviser and current president and CEO of R&H Security Consulting).

Bob Tedeschi reports for the New York Times that this holiday season fraudsters are shifting their focus - reporting that "industry leaders say smaller online retailers, and those with strong gift-certificate sales, are being especially hard hit."

comScore Networks has released its latest estimates of consumer online non-travel (retail) spending at U.S. ecommerce sites for the 2006 holiday season through December 8. According to comScore, "during the first 38 days of the season this year, total online retail spending reached $15.6 billion, marking a 25-percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005."   » Continue Reading

Retail Decisions says there is a swelling army of invisible thieves, perhaps the worst kind, who are pillaging online merchants via stolen credit and debit card information. Criminals use stolen credit and debit card information to fraudulently purchase items for resale.   » Continue Reading

eMarketer reports on Cyber Monday, November 27, which - according to data from comScore Networks - was the biggest ecommerce retail day in history at $608 million, up 26% compared to last year.

The latest edition of The Internet Retailer has arrived - with its ranking of this year's top 50 best ecommerce sites. According to the magazine, "the best e-retailers of 2006 have leapt forward, soaring ahead of myriad other retail sites by adding the latest features and functions that, according to some industry observers, are starting to help differentiate successful e-commerce sites from middling ones." Highlights are sites adding video content, hosting customer reviews and enabling social networking on their sites.

comScore Networks has released data on consumer online non-travel (retail) spending at U.S. sites during the first 31 days of the 2006 holiday season to date, which began on November 1. According to comScore, US total online retail spending reached $11.7 billion through December 1, representing a 24-percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005.   » Continue Reading

Wal-Mart Stores has announced it has experienced nearly a 60 percent increase in traffic this holiday season over last year on its Web site, Walmart.com.   » Continue Reading

comScore Networks has released data on consumer online non-travel (retail) spending at U.S. sites for Cyber Monday and the 2006 holiday season to date. Cyber Monday, which marks the first major spike in online holiday spending as people returned to work after the Thanksgiving weekend, saw slightly higher than expected gains. Cyber Monday sales totaled $608 million, up 26 percent versus the same day last year. During the first 27 days of November this year, total online retail spending reached $9.48 billion, marking a 24-percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005.   » Continue Reading

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce has announced that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the third quarter of 2006, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, was $27.5 billion, an increase of 4.5 percent (±1.5%) from the second quarter of 2006. Total retail sales for the third quarter of 2006 were estimated at $991.7 billion, an increase of 0.7 percent (±0.3%) from the second quarter of 2006. The third quarter 2006 e commerce estimate increased 20.9 percent (±5.3%) from the third quarter of 2005 while total retail sales increased 5.1 percent (±0.3%) in the same period. E-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2006 accounted for 2.8 percent of total sales.

It's Cyber Monday today - when everybody supposedly does their holiday shopping while at the office. Google Checkout has launched its Cyber Monday page of holiday offers where you can receive "$10 off purchases of $30 or more, or $20 off purchases of $50 or more, depending on the merchant." PayPal is offering free shipping and more from its holiday shopping page. Wal-Mart.com is also offering 5 days of super specials available only online - beginning today.

Gartner reports that, while ecommerce sales have experienced consistent growth, "recent security breaches (online and offline) are having a significant impact on buying patterns of U.S. adults. Due to consumer’s concerns about the security of the Internet, nearly $2 billion in U.S. e-commerce sales will be lost in 2006," according to Gartner.   » Continue Reading

comScore Networks has released its most recent data on consumer online non-travel (retail) spending at U.S. sites during the 2006 holiday season, which began November 1, 2006. According to comScore, "during the first 24 days of November this year, total online retail spending reached $8.31 billion, marking a 23 percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005. Black Friday, known for being one of the busier offline consumer shopping days of the year, saw particularly high online sales with $434 million spent, up 42 percent versus last year."   » Continue Reading

Retail Decisions reports that online volumes surged 109% on a like for like basis on Black Friday. According to ReD, most online shoppers waited until the afternoon to begin their shopping. The peak shopping hour was between 3:00PM - 4:00PM and the peak shopping minute was 2:53PM.   » Continue Reading

comScore Networks has released the first in a series of reports that measure consumers' online non-travel (retail) spending during the 2006 holiday season, which began November 1, 2006. During the first 19 days of November this year, total online retail spending reached $6.35 billion, marking a 23-percent increase versus the corresponding days in 2005.   » Continue Reading

Google Checkout has announced that it will be launching a holiday site on Monday, November 27, 2006. According to a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Google Checkout, 40% of employed U.S. adults say they'll be doing at least some of their online holiday shopping from work this year, with 1 in 4 of those shoppers logging on to track down that perfect gift on Monday, November 27. (57% plan to shop during coffee and lunch breaks, while 34% will wait until the end of the workday.)   » Continue Reading

Shop.org reports that Cyber Monday, the ceremonial kickoff to the online holiday shopping season, will likely be even bigger this year as retailers target at-work shoppers with lunch hour promotions and special savings.   » Continue Reading

A friend writes to tell us about his recent shopping experience on Overstock.com - where he says Bill Me Later was the default payment option for his purchase. He described the whole process and amazing straightforward and simple - once logged into Overstock, he was able to buy and charge to Bill Me Later very quickly. We've also been noticing the increased presence of Bill Me Later as a payment option at more and more online merchants.

CyberSource has announced that it has predicted that December 18th will be the biggest online shopping day of 2006. The estimate is based on the company's analysis of six years of historical transaction volumes and the number of shipping days remaining before December 25th.   » Continue Reading

Discover Card has released its first "Holiday Shopping Survey, assessing consumers’ spending trends and patterns for the 2006 holiday season. The findings show that a majority of shoppers plan to spend up to $500 this holiday season and one in four intends to spend from $500 to $1,000."   » Continue Reading

CyberSource has announced the results of its 8th Annual CyberSource Survey of eCommerce fraud - reporting that U.S. merchants will lose as much as $3 billion in eCommerce revenue to fraud in 2006, up from $2.8 billion last year. As a percent of revenue, fraud losses will be slightly less this year-merchants expect to lose 1.4% of revenue, down from 1.6% the year before, and 1.8% in 2004.   » Continue Reading

Google has announced that it is giving Google Checkout merchants a big holiday gift: processing all of their Google Checkout sales for free beginning today through the end of 2006 - whether the merchant is a Google Adwords advertiser or not. Google says "There's no limit: we're processing all of your Checkout sales for free" from November 8 through December 31.

In its first serious foray into consumer incentive programs, PayPal this morning announced new promotional incentive programs "valued at up to $100 million just in time for the busy holiday shopping season. As part of these incentives, millions of PayPal customers will be eligible to receive cash rebate offers up to $20 when paying with PayPal on qualifying merchant Web sites in North America, including eBay.com. Additionally, consumers will find free shipping from some of the Web's most popular brand names when they pay with PayPal this holiday season."   » Continue Reading

YeePay has announced a partnership with the largest online retailer in China - Dang Dang, to provide exclusive payment service for Dang Dang Mall (mall.dangdang.com), a new online store hosting program that allows merchants to sell their goods through Dang Dang's network.   » Continue Reading

HP has announced that it is offering PayPal as a payment option at the HP Home & Home Office Store.   » Continue Reading

Mall Networks, a company that "connects top online merchants to the universe of consumer rewards programs", has announced it has completed its second round of private equity funding.   » Continue Reading

PayPal has launched an Online Merchant Network site - "a place to get information, advice from seasoned merchants, and resources to help increase your profits." The Online Merchant Network's mission states "The goal of the OMN is to build an objective, open, and welcoming environment for the exchange of ideas about business. Although the OMN is hosted by PayPal, we encourage and welcome any healthy discussion about all payment providers, both pros and cons. And from time to time PayPal, as well as third-party contributors, will provide content about topics concerning online businesses. In essence, we're building the OMN to help businesses grow - and thrive."

I4 Commerce, a provider of payment and marketing technology solutions for multichannel retailers, has announced that Brookstone is now offering customers the option to buy now and pay later with Bill Me Later. Part of I4 Commerce's PayCapture suite, Bill Me Later is a fast, convenient and secure way for Brookstone customers to pay for purchases without providing credit card information.   » Continue Reading

Verid has announced a major new version of its Knowledge Based Authentication (KBA) platform that helps businesses quickly authenticate consumers through a series of personalized questions unique to that individual. According to Verid, "businesses are rapidly moving away from using social security numbers to identify customers and recognizing that a pet's name may not be the best way to protect financial or other accounts."   » Continue Reading

Rick Aristotle Munarriz writes for Motley Fool about Google Checkout. He reports on the experiences of one retailer who's seeing 8% to 12% of its transactions closed using Google Checkout vs. 3% to 4% for PayPal.

Charles Arthur writes for the Guardian about "clickprints" - "a unique pattern of web surfing behavior based on actions such as the number of pages viewed per session, the number of minutes spent on each page, the time or day of the week the page is visited, and so on" - based upon research by Professor Balaji Padmanabhan, at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Professor Catherine Yang, of the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Davis.

AuctionBytes' David Steiner reports on his latest experiences buying online - using a shopping list of 10 items - at several ecommerce sites including eBay Express, Amazon, Overstock and Google Checkout. Some of his findings include not being able to pay with PayPal on Overstock even though it's promoted on the site, that eBay Express recently increased the number of sellers you can shop at in a single checkout from 5 to 10, and, while he likes Google Checkout, he'd really prefer to shop from multiple sellers and do a single checkout.

Ecommerce malls are back. In the early days of ecommerce, there were some true believers who felt that the real-world shopping mall would transform into online malls. Some tried, most failed. Today, they're back. In the latest mall news, American Express today launched the Bonus Points Mall, "a new benefit that enables Membership Rewards enrollees to earn two points for virtually every dollar spent at more than 100 top brand name online retailers."   » Continue Reading

Amazon Business Solutions has launched "Fulfillment by Amazon" and "WebStore by Amazon," which Amazon says gives "small and medium-sized businesses access to Amazon's order fulfillment, customer service, customer shipping offers, and underlying website technology to improve the experience they offer their customers."   » Continue Reading

Click&Buy, an ePayment provider for online and mobile digital content and services, has announced the signing of an agreement with Yamaha Music Interactive for the global musical instrument manufacturer's interactive division. Through the use of Click&Buy, Yamaha will offer its customers the option to purchase products on-line via credit and debit card, direct bank debits or invoice.   » Continue Reading

Yuba Bessaoud reports for the London Sunday Times on plans by banks in the UK to provide hand-held terminals to bank customers that will generate unique eight-digit codes on every transaction - and plans to use them for online banking access. If successful for bank access, Bessaoud reports that APACS might later extend the use of the terminals to retail websites as well.

Donna Bogatin blogs on ZDNet about comments made yesterday by Alan Eustace, Google SVP Engineering & Research during a Q&A at Citigroup's 13th Annual Global Technology Conference (webcast) in New York City. According to Eustace, "Payment right now on the Web is a disaster. Everybody who has ever tried to buy anything on the Web right now, you don’t know who the person who is selling the goods are, you have to input your credit card to a thousand different places out there, who knows what those people are doing with my credit card...."

Karen E. Klein writes for Business Week's Smart Answers column about what it takes these days to set up your own online business. She says that, "with barriers to entry falling dramatically over the past decade, becoming an online retailer or service provider has become an attractive option. Startup costs can be as low as $3,000, and the business can be set up in a home office and attended to at nights and on weekends, allowing new entrepreneurs to keep their day jobs."

Visa USA has announced that Travelocity now "offers customers the opportunity to purchase their getaways using Verified by Visa, a payment card fraud-prevention service that protects Visa cardholders when shopping online."   » Continue Reading

Digital Transactions reports on comments by a PayPal executive that eBay's action barring eBay auction sellers from using Google Checkout is "aimed at barring new payment techniques until they can prove they control fraud and otherwise protect users."

The 41st Parameter has announced it has identified an e-commerce fraud scheme in which fraudsters are coordinating their attacks against e-commerce merchants by using personal, digital and financial data that all appear legitimate to typical detection systems.   » Continue Reading

Ben Charny reports for MarketWatch that "Levi Strauss & Co.'s main Web site has quietly stopped offering Google Inc.'s Checkout online payment feature."

Dave Taylor blogs about the differences between the merchant receipts provided for purchases using PayPal vs. Google Checkout - and strongly favors PayPal's approach. According to Dave, "the key difference between the two is that the Google Checkout receipt is a geeky "transaction log" sort of style, while Paypal offers up a much more understandable information block about the buyer including the all-important "note" section that lets them communicate directly with me as if it were an attached comment." Over on his "Ask Dave Taylor" blog, he's got a great writeup about how to add Google Checkout "Buy Now" buttons to your website.

Barnes & Noble has announced that Barnes & Noble.com now accepts PayPal.   » Continue Reading

Bryan Keogh reports for the Wall St. Journal on the various practices that ecommerce retailers are pursuing with respect to their free shipping policies.

Bob Tedeschi reports for the New York Times on two new online shopping services, Mpire.com and Slide.com, that "present new variations on the traditional method of finding items online."

Lisa Bachelor writes for the UK's Observer about how "six months on from the mandatory introduction of chip and PIN cards, increasing theft on the Internet is forcing banks and retailers to trial new technology to combat card fraud." Because of the increased difficulty in counterfeiting cards as a result of chip and PIN, fraudsters in the UK are now focusing on both 'card-not-present' as well as non-chip and PIN environments outside of the UK.

T-Online Venture Fund has announced it has made a 10% investment in Zug, Switzerland-based FIRSTGATE Holding AG, owner of Click&Buy.   » Continue Reading

Michael Clarke reports for This is Money from the UK on the results of recent Datamonitor research commissioned by PayPal that concludes that online retail spending in the UK is likely to reach £21.6bn by 2010 with overall online spend, including services, reaching £39bn by the end of the decade. The study indicates that the "most lucrative online shopping sectors by that date will be food and grocery, which will account for a third of online spending, followed by clothing and footwear. Spending on downloads will reach £1.7bn in the next five years - a ten-fold increase."

The Direct Response Forum's annual conference is being held next week, August 13-15th, in Boston. This year's keynote will be given by Jack Stephenson, head of McKinsey & Company's North American Payments Practice. The full agenda for next weeks's event is available online.

Vindicia's Gene Hoffman tells us that the new Vindicia CashBox payment management service is specifically designed to meet the needs of merchants selling digital content or "software as a service" online. CashBox helps these kinds of merchants both manage their payment processing much more efficiently (especially for handling recurring payments and for handling chargebacks) as well as providing customer lifecycle management services to optimize top line revenue. We expect to hear more from Vindicia about CashBox's payment management capabilities when it's officially launched soon.

FotoTime has announced FotoStudio, a new service for amateur and professional digital photographers to easily and cost effectively setup an online storefront to sell prints and gifts showcasing their photos.   » Continue Reading

Gail Liberman and Alan Lavine report for MarketWatch on emerging payment methods - saying that "newer online technologies, which include the ability to make a purchase by keying in a checking account number or PIN to debit a checking account, are moving mainstream." They cite a report by Celent's Dan Schatt who says that "although online alternatives to debit and credit accounted for just 12% of payments volume in 2005, they will more than double in the next three years to account for 26% of online payment volume. Credit-card volume will drop below 50% of online payment volume by 2009."

Alan Rimm-Kaufman blogs about an interview he had earlier this week with Benjamin Ling, Product Lead for Google Checkout. According to Rimm-Kaufman, "Ben was quick to point out that (in his view) Google Checkout isn’t a payment type, but rather a checkout process. It wraps actual payment types (Visa, Amex, Mastercard, Discover); more payment types are possible. PayPal and BillMeLater were mentioned in this regard."

Ina Steiner reports for AuctionBytes about a new seller rating system introduced by Google Checkout and wonders if this represents another threat to eBay. More details about what Google calls "reviews" can be found in the online help for Google Checkout.

APACS, the UK payments association representing card companies, has released 2005 e-commerce figures. The results show that 14 per cent of the 34 million adults who use the Internet (4.9 million) made their most recent purchase from an auction site in 2005. There were 79 million transactions over this period, and £2.8 billion was spent. Looking at the wider e-commerce market, for the first time more than half of all adults made an online purchase during 2005 - 25 million or 52 per cent of all adults (and 74 per cent of internet users). This is an increase of 11 per cent of Internet users over 2004.   » Continue Reading

Aj Moss inc., an online retailer of bedding ensembles and linens, has put out a press release about the addition of Google Checkout to their e-commerce website. According to the retailer, they hope Google Checkout enables them to "reach an audience of people who seek more simplicity, security and speed in their shopping experience."   » Continue Reading

Blogger Kirby Witmer writes about some of his experiences trying to use Google Checkout to purchase from Buy.com. You can find and read more blog posts about Google Checkout using this Technorati search.

Gregory M. Lamb writes in today's Christian Science Monitor about Google Checkout, asks some questions about the resulting data that Google may collect from the service, and compares it to PayPal, and suggests "the service may quickly prove attractive to the vast number of online merchants, large and small, who pay to advertise using Google's AdWords program."

Booz Allen Hamilton discusses the impact of Google Checkout on the eCommerce market in the UK and concludes that the market for online payments will consolidate around Google Checkout, PayPal, and 1-2 others major players.

If existing providers (predominantly the card issuers and acquirers) do not find an effective counter strategy we believe they could lose 10-20% by 2008 and in the long term up to 30%.

Digital Transactions reports that the executive in charge of Google Checkout, Benjamin Ling, has PayPal under consideration as one of the payment methods that the new service may eventually support. Ling's also critical of eBay's decision to not allow eBay sellers to use Google Checkout as a payment option.

Wade Roush writes for MIT's Technology Review about Google Checkout and the threat it could represent to PayPal for consumer ecommerce payments to merchants - even with its lack of a person-to-person payment capability. Roush suggests that, for consumers, it's a "relatively small step to give Google a credit card number and let the company track online purchases, especially when the promised reward is simpler transactions in the future, along with tools like the purchase history and transaction tracker."

[Editor's note: Seems like Wade has his merchant value proposition reversed - our understanding is that Google provides a credit toward Google Checkout fees based upon the amount the merchant spends on Google AdWords - at the rate of a $1 credit for every $10 spent on AdWords. We also noticed last night that Google is running its own AdWords ads promoting Google Checkout with the language: "Running an eCommerce site? Learn how you can process sales for free."]