Visa is abandoning its plans to acquire Plaid after the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued over antitrust concerns.
Visa announced in January 2020 its plans to purchase Plaid. While the smaller company is primarily known for a service that allows users to connect their bank accounts to various finance apps, the company was working on a service that would directly compete with Visa’s core business.
As a result, Visa’s move to purchase Plaid, to the tune of $5.3 billion, was widely seen as an attempt to stamp out a competitive threat from a smaller rival. The DOJ was concerned by that, especially given Visa’s dominance in its market, prompting it to file a lawsuit.
According to CNBC, Visa has ended its takeover attempt, a decision the DOJ has hailed as “a victory for American consumers and small businesses.”
GM has launched a new business, BrightDrop, to build electric solutions to cover the entire delivery process.
As the transition to electric transportation moves ahead, GM is working to tackle the delivery industry. To better do so, the company is launching BrightDrop, with a focus on developing an “ecosystem of electric first-to-last-mile products.”
The first product that will come to market is the BrightDrop EP1, a propulsion-assist electric pallet. This will be followed by the BrightDrop EV600, an electric light commercial delivery vehicle.
The company will also be developing a range software and services to compliment its products.
“BrightDrop offers a smarter way to deliver goods and services,” said Mary Barra GM Chairman and CEO. “We are building on our significant expertise in electrification, mobility applications, telematics and fleet management, with a new one-stop-shop solution for commercial customers to move goods in a better, more sustainable way.”
GM is working with FedEx Express to fine-tune the new products and services. One pilot program has already been completed, with another slated to begin.
“Our need for reliable, sustainable transportation has never been more important,” said Richard Smith, FedEx Express regional president of the Americas and executive vice president of global support. “BrightDrop is a perfect example of the innovations we are adopting to transform our company as time-definite express transportation continues to grow. With this new suite of products, we will help improve the safety, security and timeliness of FedEx Express deliveries, while reducing our environmental impact and protecting the well-being of our couriers.”
Staples is once again offering to buy Office Depot, this time for $2.1 billion.
Staples had previously tried to purchase its rival in 2015. At the time, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blocked the merger, saying the combined company would control too much of the market.
According to CNN Business the company is determined to do whatever it takes to gain regulatory approval this time around. It has signaled it’s even willing to sell CompuCom, its IT management company, or sell its business-to-business unit.
Staples is offering $2.1 billion, or $40 per share. This represents roughly a 60% premium over Office Depot’s current stock price, as of the time of writing. The translocation would be an all-cash deal, according to Staples.
Verizon used CES 2021 to announce its Skyward drone company will be collaborating with UPS Flight Forward for retail deliveries.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently took important steps toward making drone deliveries a reality. It’s no surprise that UPS is quickly moving to ensure it can provide the service to its customers, and is collaborating with Skyward to make it happen.
“We will need the ability to manage and support multiple drones, flying simultaneously, dispatched from a centralized location, operating in a secure and safe environment. To do this at scale, alongside Verizon and Skyward, we’ll need the power of 5G,” said Carol B. Tomé, CEO of UPS.
“We’re just beginning to see how the power of 5G Ultra Wideband will transform the way businesses operate,” said Rima Qureshi, Chief Strategy Officer at Verizon. “By partnering with UPS and other innovative companies, we can learn from each other’s expertise and collaborate to create solutions that help move the world forward.”
UPS has already had more than 3,800 drone delivery flights. With the global pandemic, however, drone deliveries have become more important than ever and are widely seen as a way to deliver products in a safe way. The rapid increase in demand is no doubt responsible for UPS working with Skyward.
The drones will stay connected and be controlled via Verizon’s 4G LTE network, as well as its 5G network where possible.
Some of the biggest retailers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help dictate their return policies.
For many consumers, once they return an item they never give it another thought. For retailers, however, returns can represent a significant loss. There are a number of factors that can make it even worse, such as the size of item, shipping and shelf life.
Walmart, Target and Amazon are turning to AI to help them optimize their return process. According to The Wall Street Journal, the retailers are using AI to determine when it is worth processing a return, versus letting the customer keep the product and issuing them a refund instead.
Lorie Anderson of Vancouver, WA, tried to return makeup to Target, as well as batteries to Walmart. In both cases, the retailers told her to keep the items and still issued a refund.
“They were inexpensive, and it wouldn’t make much financial sense to return them by mail,” Ms. Anderson, 38 years old, said. “It’s a hassle to pack up the box and drop it at the post office or UPS. This was one less thing I had to worry about.”
Target even encourages customers to donate items they receive a refund for.
AI has been making its way into a wide range of industries. This is merely the latest example of how it can be used to help companies make better decisions.
The US Judiciary is going decidedly low-tech in an effort to protect important information in the wake of the SolarWinds attack.
The SolarWinds attack was one of the most devastating hacks the US has experienced. Multiple government agencies were compromised, with the federal Judiciary suspected to be among them.
The attack was so successful because it was a supply chain attack. Rather than attacking individual target organizations, a supply chain attack relies on compromising a legitimate piece of software up the supply chain, installing a trojan and then gaining access to all the organizations that use the software in question. In this example, the compromised software was SolarWinds’ Orion IT monitoring and management software, used by government agencies and corporations alike.
In the wake of the attack, access to public documents will not be impacted, but the Judiciary is taking no chances with sensitive documents.
Under the new procedures announced today, highly sensitive court documents (HSDs) filed with federal courts will be accepted for filing in paper form or via a secure electronic device, such as a thumb drive, and stored in a secure stand-alone computer system. These sealed HSDs will not be uploaded to CM/ECF. This new practice will not change current policies regarding public access to court records, since sealed records are confidential and currently are not available to the public.
These extraordinary measures are the latest indication of the damage and impact the SolarWinds attack has had on public and private institutions.
Intel has introduced RealSense ID Facial Authentication in an effort to deliver private, secure facial recognition.
Traditional authentication methods leave much to be desired, especially with rise of ransomware attacks, software supply chain attacks, identity theft and additional threats. Intel’s hope is that RealSense ID will provide a more secure alternative, paving the way to use facial recognition to unlock access controls, smart locks, ATMs, kiosks, POS systems and more.
Intel touts the ease with which RealSense can be deployed and used.
With an easy enrollment process and no network setup needed, Intel RealSense ID brings a highly accurate, natural solution that simplifies secure entry. Using only a glance, users are able to quickly unlock what’s important to them. Intel RealSense ID combines active depth with a specialized neural network, a dedicated system-on-chip and embedded secure element to encrypt and process user data quickly and safely.
Facial recognition has become one of the most controversial technologies in existence. It appears Intel is trying to bring some credibility and security to the technology, emphasizing the potential good it can offer.
The FBI is trying to determine if JetBrains was compromised as part of the SolarWinds attack.
The SolarWinds attack was one of the largest, most damaging hacks against US government and corporate entities. Some experts have said it will take months, or even years, to understand the extent of the damage.
What made the SolarWinds attack so successful was that it was a supply chain attack. Rather than trying a brute force attack, or tricking organizations into installing suspect software, hackers compromised SolarWinds’ Orion IT monitoring and management software. Since this legitimate software is in use by countless organizations, by compromising it and installing a trojan directly in it, hackers were able to hack organizations using Orion IT.
The FBI is now concerned a second application may have been compromised in a similar nature, according to Reuters. JetBrains makes a project management application called TeamCity. Like Orion IT, TeamCity is used by companies around the world, making it extremely important to determine if it was compromised as well.
“We are not aware of any investigation nor have we been contacted by any agencies,” a JetBrains spokesman said. “We are not aware of any vulnerabilities in the product or breaches that would allow for this, nor that any of our customers were affected.”
“This year we’ve seen fairly brutal changes in patterns of usage in the cloud,” says Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel. “As you can imagine, streaming (has increased). All of a sudden everybody’s kids are watching Disney+. Also, video conferencing, online gaming, and all of that spiked pretty quickly. The way we see that is it’s a big win for the cloud, in general.”
This year we’ve seen fairly brutal changes in patterns of usage in the cloud. As you can imagine, streaming (has increased). All of a sudden everybody’s kids are watching Disney+. Also, video conferencing, online gaming, and all of that spiked pretty quickly. Even if you think of the domains that were negatively impacted by COVID such as travel when all of a sudden everybody had to cancel their travel, it actually meant a lot more activity for the online sites of the travel companies.
So you see all these patterns of companies pointing up and spinning down. The way we see that is it’s a big win for the cloud, in general. Companies could change their minds they could actually scale up. They could decide to shift different services to have them delivered at different scales instead of having to spend three to six months trying to retool everything and ship that to the data centers. They could do that very quickly in the cloud. We see that as a big win for the cloud.
Next year we still see some scaling from those customers. We see some of the industries that were negatively impacted coming back online and getting back up. Across the board, we see more and more renewed urgency around digital transformation and migration to the clutches precisely because the cloud made it possible for companies to react so quickly. Those who are not on the cloud were more impacted than the others.
Datadog CEO Olivier Pomel: 2020 Was Big Win For The Cloud
WhatsApp is making major changes to its privacy policy, including sharing significant user data with Facebook.
WhatsApp users are seeing an in-app notification of changes to the privacy policy. When going to WhatsApps new terms, it’s clear the messaging platform will begin integrating more tightly with Facebook’s other companies and services, including sharing data between them.
As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information (see here) with, the other Facebook Companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings, including the Facebook Company Products.
The information shared with Facebook is substantial, including:
Your account registration information (such as your phone number), transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others (including businesses) when using our Services, mobile device information, your IP address, and may include other information identified in the Privacy Policy section entitled ‘Information We Collect’ or obtained upon notice to you or based on your consent.
The new policies will take effect on February 8. The changes are mandatory and individuals will not be able to use WhatsApp unless they accept the terms.
This is the latest reason why users who value their privacy should switch to Signal for their secure, cross-platform messaging needs.
Microsoft has revealed that hackers viewed some of its source code as part of the SolarWinds attack that government agencies are still investigating.
The SolarWinds attack is one of the most devastating cyberattacks perpetrated against US companies and government agencies. Believed to be the work of Russian hackers, the attack was a supply chain attack, compromising SolarWind’s Orion IT monitoring and management software.
As one of the organizations impacted, Microsoft has now revealed the hackers viewed some of its source code, but did not make any modifications.
We detected unusual activity with a small number of internal accounts and upon review, we discovered one account had been used to view source code in a number of source code repositories. The account did not have permissions to modify any code or engineering systems and our investigation further confirmed no changes were made. These accounts were investigated and remediated.
Microsoft is not concerned about the source code being viewed, since the company’s security protocols assume its source is being viewed by outside elements.
At Microsoft, we have an inner source approach – the use of open source software development best practices and an open source-like culture – to making source code viewable within Microsoft. This means we do not rely on the secrecy of source code for the security of products, and our threat models assume that attackers have knowledge of source code. So viewing source code isn’t tied to elevation of risk.
As with many companies, we plan our security with an “assume breach” philosophy and layer in defense-in-depth protections and controls to stop attackers sooner when they do gain access.
Although Microsoft seems to be containing any damage adequately, the degree to which the attackers compromised one of the biggest tech companies in the world is further evidence just how successful the SolarWinds attack was.
Amazon has announced it is acquiring podcast startup Wondery, with plans to add it to Amazon Music.
Amazon launched podcasts on its music platform in September 2020 and, like many digital companies, has benefited from the pandemic as people’s habits change. The company is planning on using Wondery to accelerate the growth of its podcast business.
Amazon Music launched podcasts in September 2020, and together with Wondery, we hope to accelerate the growth and evolution of podcasts by bringing creators, hosts, and immersive experiences to even more listeners across the globe, just as we do with music. This is a pivotal moment to expand the Amazon Music offering beyond music as listener habits evolve.
Wondery is already known for “Dirty John,” “Dr. Death,” “Business Wars,” and “The Shrink Next Door.” Amazon has assured users that all of Wondery’s podcasts will continue to be available on their platforms of choice.
When the deal closes, nothing will change for listeners, and they’ll continue to be able to access Wondery podcasts through a variety of providers. With Amazon Music, Wondery will be able to provide even more high-quality, innovative content and continue their mission of bringing a world of entertainment and knowledge to their audiences, wherever they listen.
Details of the deal were not disclosed, but reports in early December placed the value somewhere between $300 and $400 million. Amazon’s investment in the startup is further evidence of the importance of the podcast industry.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has passed new rules allowing drones to fly at night and fly over people.
Drones represent the single fastest-growing segment in the transportation sector, although the lack of clear regulation has slowed full adoption. The FAA has now addressed two of these issues, passing rules that should pave the way for more widespread drone usage.
The first change is that the FAA will now require Remote Identification (Remote ID) for drones. Remote ID will help integrate drones with the national airspace system by providing a way to identify them and their control station locations.
The second major change is allowing drones to be flown at night, as well as over people. While these kind of operations are currently allowed, they’re only allowed with a waiver from the FAA. With the new rules, drone operations will have increased flexility to perform these kind of operations without a waiver.
“The new rules make way for the further integration of drones into our airspace by addressing safety and security concerns,” said FAA Administrator Steve Dickson. “They get us closer to the day when we will more routinely see drone operations such as the delivery of packages.”
Amazon has reported a record-breaking holiday season, shipping some 1.5 billion products.
Consumer purchasing has underwent major transformation as a result of the pandemic. Record numbers of individuals turned to online shopping to avoid crowds and practice social distancing.
Amazon was one of the biggest beneficiaries of this transformation, as customers turned in droves to the online giant. The company delivered some 1.5 billion electronics, toys, home products, beauty and personal care products during the holidays.
In addition, third-party sellers saw a 50% growth in sales, compared to 2019. Small and medium-sized businesses sold almost 1 billion products via Amazon.
The company’s growth also resulted in hundreds of thousands of new jobs, with the company adding some 400,000 full and part-time jobs in 2020. The company also spent over “$2.5 billion in bonus pay to front-line workers,” as well as donated millions of items during the holiday season.
“Amazonians around the world have truly shown what it means to be customer-centric and support our communities this year,” said Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer at Amazon. “When our customers—including healthcare workers on the front lines—most needed essential supplies, our teams and partners went above and beyond to stock and deliver those items. When it became clear that COVID-19 testing was going to be important, Amazonians across the company moved quickly to build our own testing capacity so we could help protect employees and deliver products to customers. And when customers needed a little extra holiday cheer, millions of employees and partners worked together to deliver more savings and holiday gifts than ever before. We couldn’t be prouder of, or more thankful for, our teams around the world.”
Given the success of online shopping this year, and especially this holiday season, it’s a safe bet shopping is forever changed.
The long-rumored Apple Car may debut in 2021, two years before it was expected, according to supply chain reports.
Apple has been rumored to be working on the Apple Car for years, with a number of high-profile executives leading the project, known as Titan, at various points. Most recently, the project was put under the oversight of John Giannandrea, Apple’s head of AI. Throughout Titan’s history, it has been describedalternately as a full-fledged car, an AI system for using with a manufacturing partner or an aftermarket system that can be integrated with a variety of vehicles.
According to Reuters, the Apple Car is once again on track to be a full-fledged vehicle, slated for production in 2024. Apple is also reportedly working on a radical new battery technology that could give the company an advantage.
A separate report by Economic Daily News (via MacDailyNews), however, puts the Apple Car’s debut much sooner, as early as September 2021.
The key supply chain in Taiwan confirmed that Apple expects to release the Apple Car in September next year, at least two years earlier than the original plan. Its prototype has been tested on the roads in California, USA.
According to the report, Apple is preparing a major manufacturing initiative.
Futian’s second phase plant in Tongluo is expected to be put into operation next year. The production capacity of electric vehicle power motor components for the first and second phase plants can be increased from the current 400,000 sets per year to 1 million sets in one fell swoop, and the power integration system will increase to more than 400,000 sets.
According to the executives of a major electric vehicle supply chain manufacturer, with the order shipment and assembly completed, dozens of Apple Car’s first prototype cars have been secretly tested on the road in California.
At this point, given Apple’s long-standing and well-deserved reputation for secrecy, there’s no way to know exactly what Cupertino is up to. Nonetheless, multiple rumors regarding the Apple Car’s development and (perhaps) sooner-than-expected release, could signal a major upheaval in the automotive industry.
Huawei is preparing to open its first network equipment factory outside of China, as the company works to address security concerns.
Once one of the dominant network equipment providers, Huawei has been under pressure as a result of its close ties to the Chinese government. The US has led a campaign to convince countries to ban the company from participating in their networks, with many doing just that.
The company is taking great pains to prove it can be trusted. Its latest effort is plans to open a factory in France, near the border of Germany, the first of its kind outside of China.
“With this factory built at the crossroads of Europe, Huawei will enrich its already rich presence on the continent with 23 research and development centres, more than 100 partner universities, more than 3,100 suppliers and an effective supply chain,” the company said in a statement, according to International Business Times.
Manufacturing key equipment outside of China may help the company dispel concerns about potential backdoors the Chinese government could exploit.
Demand for Teslas in China could help push the company over its 2020 goal of selling 500,000 vehicles, according to one analyst.
Many were skeptical that Tesla could achieve the goal it set for itself when it announced it was planning on shipping 500,000 vehicles in 2020. Undeterred, the company reiterated its goal during its third-quarter earnings call.
According to Business Insider, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives believes China is the key to Tesla’s goal. In November, Tesla sold some 22,000 vehicles in China. If that demand continues in December, it should be enough to push the company past the 500,000 mark.
“We believe the company is tracking to another strong month of December in China which could be the tipping point to get Musk & Co. to hit/exceed its 500k annual delivery target, an achievement not even on the map for the Street going back to the late spring/summer timeframe,” Ives said.
Ives believes Teslas stock could increase as much as 56% to $1,000 a share, in part as a result of China’s demand.
“The China growth story is worth at least $100 per share in a bull case to Tesla as this EV penetration is set to ramp significantly over the next 12 to 18 months, along with major battery innovations coming out of Giga 3 and elsewhere throughout the China EV supply chain,” Ives added.
FireEye has uncovered a sophisticated intrusion campaign against government and corporate organizations, using a supply chain attack.
Supply chain attacks are one of the most sophisticated types of hacks in existence. While many hacks rely on convincing a target to download malicious software, a supply chain attack involves inserting malicious code in legitimate software before it’s distributed to customers, hence attacking the software supply chain.
The attack in question uses a compromised update to SolarWind’s Orion IT monitoring and management software, with FireEye calling the compromised version “SUNBURST.” The trojanized version is incredibly sophisticated, using various methods to avoid detection, all the while communicating with third-party servers.
“After an initial dormant period of up to two weeks, it retrieves and executes commands, called “Jobs”, that include the ability to transfer files, execute files, profile the system, reboot the machine, and disable system services,” writes FireEye’s team. “The malware masquerades its network traffic as the Orion Improvement Program (OIP) protocol and stores reconnaissance results within legitimate plugin configuration files allowing it to blend in with legitimate SolarWinds activity. The backdoor uses multiple obfuscated blocklists to identify forensic and anti-virus tools running as processes, services, and drivers.”
The trojan has enabled hackers to monitor email communications at the US Treasury and Commerce departments, according to Reuters. FireEye says victims have also “included government, consulting, technology, telecom and extractive entities in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.” Since the attack is actively in progress, FireEye suspects there will be additional victims as well.
To mitigate the attack, “SolarWinds recommends all customers immediately upgrade to Orion Platform release 2020.2.1 HF 1, which is currently available via the SolarWinds Customer Portal. In addition, SolarWinds has released additional mitigation and hardening instructions here.”
If an organization is not able to update, FireEye has outlined additional mitigation steps that should be taken.
One of the largest businesses in the world, Amazon, makes up 77% of all supplement sales online. This percent is larger than the five biggest vitamin sellers combined. However, since many are controlled by third-parties, online supplement legitimacy has grown controversial.
The history of the mismarketed supplement on Amazon is long-lived. Hundreds of articles began emerging about fake products as early as 2013. In June 2020, NPR discovered over 100 dietary supplements illegally marketed as antiviral medications.
Mismarketed supplements come in a variety of forms, including those that:
Wrongfully record doses of active ingredients.
Include unlisted ingredients or ingredients by the wrong name.
Lack of at least one major active ingredient.
The most commonly mislabeled supplements on Amazon range from bodybuilding supplements and CBD products to herbal and dietary vitamins. The goal of supplements is usually to augment or increase heath relative to personal goals, but poorly manufactured supplements often produce adverse, even dangerous effects.
Nearly 5,500 health incidents were reported to the US Poison Control Center over the past year. Vitamins have been known to negatively affect vital organs such as the liver, pancreas, and gallbladder. Worse, overdoses and other forms of supplement poisoning have increased by 35% in less than 25 years. The issues associated with vitamin and supplement use are only increasing, and the industry is not slowing down.
The supplement and vitamin market is one of the most thriving industries worldwide. It is projected that the global market for dietary supplements will surpass $27 billion dollars by 2027. It is safe to assume that the market for supplements — whether they are high quality or not — will only continue to grow over time.
From a business point of view, controlling the 58% of third party vitamin sellers on Amazon’s platform is tricky. Many dishonest businesses are familiar with loopholes in the legal and digital business systems, leading to exploits that include:
Reselling supplements that were not approved through quality control.
Falsely claiming to be located inside of the US to avoid consequences.
Paid for reviews that claim a poor quality supplement is safe for human use.
Tricky business practices make it extraordinarily difficult to purchase safe supplement products through Amazon. This revelation pushed the company to take action, although not as quickly as most had hoped.
Amazon’s Project Zero launched in 2019 in order to combat false advertising and poor business practices listing supplements online. The program utilizes a program that crawls Amazon search listings to identify suspicious, fake, or dangerous products. Unfortunately, the program requires opting-in by small businesses, reducing reach and identification capabilities.
A year later in 2020, Amazon debuted a pilot program to vet new businesses on a live basis. It is hoped that the program will identify poor quality supplements before they hit the market, but the full extent of the program has not yet been tested.
Until better circumstances surround the Amazon supplement industry, it will be important to choose only verified, safe sellers. Look for supplements that follow USDA regulations, possess signs of high quality, and are free from red flags. Until then, this infographic may give further insights.
Microsoft has announced an expansion of its partnership with SAP to improve supply chain and Industry 4.0 solutions.
SAP is one of the leading enterprise software providers, and the two companies are expanding their partnership “to help customers design and operate intelligent digital supply chain and Industry 4.0 solutions.” The two companies are also working together to promote interoperability in the industry.
The partnership will allow customers to run SAP’s Digital Supply Chain solutions on Microsoft Azure. The solution will run as software-as-a-service (SaaS) on Azure, giving customers the ability to scale as needed and reap the benefits of the cloud.
SAP is excited to bring our proven and innovative solutions to Microsoft Azure for our manufacturing and digital supply chain customers. This partnership gives our customers the ability to subscribe to our digital supply chain and manufacturing solutions in the cloud and enhances our offerings for Industry 4.0. Building on this, SAP solutions will soon be available at the edge in factories, plants, and automated warehouses in close proximity to sensors, machines, and control systems. —Franz Hero, SAP Senior Vice President for Digital Supply Chain Solutions.
The partnership should be a big win for both Microsoft and SAP customers.
“Customers that engage with us from a digital standpoint also continue to enjoy coming into the store,” says Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen. “They also spend about twice as much with us. When you look at those things together I really feel optimistic about the future. We’re continuing to make progress on the things that matter on a seamless experience… digital, fresh, and friendly.”
Rodney McMullen, CEO of Kroger, says that customers who engage digitally come in more often and spend twice as much on average as non-digital customers:
Seamless Experience of Digital, Fresh, and Friendly
Every day our associates are taking care of our customers. We’re continuing to make progress on the things that matter on a seamless experience… digital, fresh, and friendly. When you look at the things behind the numbers continuing strong trends. If you look at the things that we’re doing it sets us up well for the fourth quarter and sets us to continue to gain share in 2021 as well.
One of the things that our customers are telling us is they’ve learned how to cook, they enjoy cooking, and they enjoy the time together as a family. Also, I think the economy continually will continue to be a little bit soft which will cause people to eat at home more as well. Both of those things will continue to provide support (for increased sales).
Customers That Engage Digitally Spend Twice As Much
Obviously, we’re anxious for the vaccine to get here and to get widespread use of it just like everyone else is. We were making great progress in gaining share even before COVID 19 started and we expect once things get back to normal we’ll be able to continue to gain share as well. We can’t wait until a vaccine gets out there and it gets widespread usage.
I really believe our teams will continue to take care of our customers and the seamless experience will tie it all together. What we find are customers that engage with us from a digital standpoint also continue to enjoy coming into the store. They also spend about twice as much with us. When you look at those things together I really feel optimistic about the future.
Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen: Customers That Engage Digitally Spend Twice As Much
