Telxon Manual Walmart
I have started a position as Cashier at Walmart a few months ago. Say what you will, but this post is about the cool tech that I discovered Walmart uses, and I am here to report to you guys, as a tech community, as to what most people do NOT know about Walmart. There will be some non-tech things in here as well.
Feel free to ask me any questions, or add to what you know. Keep in mind, this is all at my store, and your local Walmart may be ran differently. The coolest tech would have to be seeing how integrated everything really is. Every associate uses a system called My Guide in order to find out what we have to do for the day. The best part of this, no need to report to a boss, manager, etc.
The computer handles all, and tells all. Each name badge no matter who you are, has a barcode on the back. We can scan this badge at any -My Guide hub/computer -Price checker -Handheld Terminal -Inventory Terminal that is also handheld -Register And from there, the system will tell you what to do, from cleaning up the aisles, walking the floor to assist customers, to 'Go to Register 15 and operate it.'
Stockers have time limits on their guide items. The Cash Registers are made by IBM, they are the IBM SurePOS 700. All registers run a proprietary purpose made for Point of Sale OS, called IBM 4690.
I believe the 4690 OS is a derivative of SUSE Linux. Most grocers, independent retailers, run on IBM 4690, including but not limited to, Walmart, Costco, Sam's Club, Safeway (Windows XP front end, but 4690 software runs on top of Windows XP, using something called IBM Terminal Services (not the same as MS Terminal Services)), and Michaels.
Walmart is actually up to date on the Point of Sale software, as evident by the Toshiba logos during the boot up process (Toshiba bought out the IBM POS division not too long ago). Every Walmart, and Walmart owned store in the entire world, including ASDA in the UK, Walmart China, Canada, Mexico, Best Price in India etc all run on the same IBM 4690 system. Yes this means we can check inventory on whats selling at Best Price in India right now. On touchscreen registers, the software that runs is Java based. On registers where there is a screen facing you, the customer, it is a touchscreen, you can use it to scroll up and down on your receipt. Walmart actually takes EMV (Chip & PIN), and our terminals will actually prompt you to 'Insert or Slide card Quickly'sad that less than 1% of customers will actually know what this is, less, actually know we support itunfortunately unless you're from Europe, most people including Cashiers do not even know what Chip & PIN is. If you're from Europe, or have a Chip & PIN enabled card, go ahead and try it, place it in the EMV slot on the bottom of the terminal, type in your PIN and it'll work and process just fine.
To the cashier, it just shows up to them as a normal credit card, and they will hit the 'Credit' key like they always have, and it goes through just fine. No signature required, as it was a Chip & PIN card. I actually had the luxury of processing one, as I checked out a customer who lives in the UK. They did not know that ASDA was owned by Walmart, despite having such a huge Walmart presence over there. EDIT: Of course chip is normal now. This post was a long time ago!
- Older stores do not have touchscreen registers, but newer, as well as recently remodeled stores have touchscreen registers, thankfully mine does, otherwise, I would need to remember Action Codes. More on Action Codes later.Our registers do a lot more than just check people out. From here, using specific 'Action Codes' we can, do random things such as call someone over for a price check, tell someone we need to go to the bathroom, get a mess cleaned up, get help with an angry customer, get more change, etc. Click to expand.Walmart has supported Chip cards for years, and we are all supposed to (finally) have CHIP & PIN cards by 2015-2017 for gas pumps to take Chip & PIN. I processed a BarclayCard on my register about two weeks ago, using the Chip & PIN slot at our Walmart store, and it worked just fine.
Target isn't up to the game yet, and they definitely have issues, as evidenced by the recent news of their credit card data being hacked. If you came to the US recently and used your card at Target, I would definitely pay attention to those bank statements, because I will say this much, those hackers probably aren't from the US., and more than likely like any other card fraud scheme, they will attempt to use these stolen cards at stores, and websites around the entire world. What threat exactly is chip and pin supposed to protect against? The situation in this case appears to be that the POS devices were directly attacked, and full track data was obtained, along with CVV2 and PIN.
That means that even if you add chip and pin, full track data is still compromised. The track data is then passed through the card associations, along with the rest of the transaction information. The track data is still what is used to create fake cards, and that isn't impacted by chip and pin. What threat exactly is chip and pin supposed to protect against? The situation in this case appears to be that the POS devices were directly attacked, and full track data was obtained, along with CVV2 and PIN.
That means that even if you add chip and pin, full track data is still compromised. The track data is then passed through the card associations, along with the rest of the transaction information.
The track data is still what is used to create fake cards, and that isn't impacted by chip and pin. Click to expand.Magnetic stripes aren't encrypted so if the PIN pads are hacked, as with the case with Target, the magstripe data is available in clear text to be easily duplicated to a new card. Chipped cards use encryption, and the encryption key changes each time the card is used, so any raw data read from the chip is useless to hackers. It's similar to the rolling code technology in a car's keyless entry remote or garage door opener where a new encryption key is generated each time it's used so the signal can't be captured and reused to unlock your car or garage. Click to expand.When I swipe my card in NZ, it tells me to insert it instead. Presumably a cloned card would pop up the same message if swiped using a chip-capable reader. Once all of the readers are chip-capable then lifting the magnetic data might be a waste of time.
On the other hand, it might be trivial to remove the 'this card has a chip' flag! It's certainly possible to do magnetic transactions with a chip card; I've found that inserting and removing the card in one smooth motion will cause it to use the magnetic data instead, which has the side benefit of letting me put my card away while it's processing, therefore speeding up the whole purchase. When I swipe my card in NZ, it tells me to insert it instead. Presumably a cloned card would pop up the same message if swiped using a chip-capable reader. Once all of the readers are chip-capable then lifting the magnetic data might be a waste of time.
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On the other hand, it might be trivial to remove the 'this card has a chip' flag! It's certainly possible to do magnetic transactions with a chip card; I've found that inserting and removing the card in one smooth motion will cause it to use the magnetic data instead, which has the side benefit of letting me put my card away while it's processing, therefore speeding up the whole purchase. Click to expand.It would be easy to remove the chip flag since it's all unencrypted and in standard form. But, I read somewhere (don't remember where and can't find it, so take this with a grain of salt) that if a bank gets an authorization request for a swiped card with a chip, from an EMV capable terminal, it realizes something's fishy and declines the transaction. So really, the only reason for the flag on the magstripe is to alert you to swipe at the start of the transaction rather than wait until it completes and does the authorization to speed things along. And to save the embarrassment of a declined card at the register. I'm guessing that judging by the fact that you said you are able to swipe at EMV registers means that the whole thing I read about it is BS, or banks are still rolling it out, or it's a country specific thing.
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It certainly makes sense though.