The concept is great but it has its problems, says Waldron, who has been trying to get the two pieces — video and POS — to really work together.

“It’s really, really attractive and I have sent DVR boxes off to integrators to try and get it to work and it’s never worked the way they said it would work,” says Waldron. “Most selling an NVR system today will say POS integration is available.”

For now, when he is looking at a new CCTV component, he makes sure it’s scalable and can handle POS integration later on.

“For my business, I think it’s the wisest thing to do at this point.”

For other retailers, integration means a large investment at a difficult time in the retail industry.

“This all can be done and more; t just takes money. Integration for me means all new systems starting with the POS,” says George Majkut, director of loss prevention with The Source.

And as Waldron points out, the issue of privacy is one that lingers since customer data would also be contained in video files in addition to the POS system.

“It’s a concern of ours because even though the credit card number might be partially blocked out you’re still sharing it with another system that is accessible and the whole thing with privacy is the assurance it can’t be hacked,” says Waldron. “I want to see the technology mature first. And if you go with one integrator, will they be here to look after you down the road and sustain it in terms of after sales service?”

Those issues aside, Waldron says each company has to evaluate its own individual need for integration of video with other components of loss prevention.

“Our credit card fraud is so low I’m not that motivated to jump to adopt it at the moment,” he says, adding that his staff is trained to follow specific procedures for credit card transactions.

“I think we catch most of those transactions before they go through,” he says.

Video integration with access control is also on the horizon for many organizations if they don’t have it already. Odyssey integrates with systems such as Brivo and Securakey.

With a camera looking at the door, the text from the card swipe is inserted over the video of the door in question. Customers are allowed to search for events by users, doors, times and events at the site or across a network.