Providing a disconcerting insight to the poverty and lack of sophistication that still pervades large parts of American society, Fujitsu Systems of America has a $5m contract to extend the computerised layaway system to the rest of K Mart’s stores US-wide: the systems, which improve customer layaway service, monitor goods on layaway and track customer payments, are already installed in about half of K Mart’s 2,100 US stores throughout the US; K Mart is a sort of down-market Woolworth’s and under a layaway system, the store reserves goods for the customer, who pays for them in installments and only gets to take possession of them when the full price has been paid.