Retailers lobby cheaper payment tech

Retailers say new payment technologies should be cheaper to use than existing card systems, reports The Register.

Shop operators claim card fees are already too high, running into hundreds of millions of pounds in the UK. The British Retail Consortium (BRC) found 44% of buying is done on debit cards, while 32% is still in cash.

The BRC says banks and technology companies should ensure any cost savings from the use of emerging payment systems are passed on to its members.

Rakuten, an e-commerce player in Japan, is acquiring PriceMinister.com, an e-commerce site in France for EUR200 million, says SF Gate.

This comes after Rakuten acquired Buy.com in the US for a similar amount and building a $50 million e-commerce joint venture with Chinese search engine Baidu.

Buy.com and PriceMinister have roughly similar models, and so will Rakuten's China joint venture.

Point-of-sale software provider Canadian Retail Solutions (CRS) is driving an education campaign in Canada on the benefits of making data backup a priority in the retail sector, states PR Leap.

"A backup of your data is like an insurance policy. You hope you never need to use it, but you sure sleep better at night knowing you have it," says Scott Smith, GM of CRS.

He explains that data backup is an ongoing hot topic in many arenas, but continues to be a devastating reality for many of Canada's retailers.