Near Field Communications Handsets and Tags, NFC Pilots and Projects

Restaurant exec: Obstacles to overcome for contactless

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

If contactless payments are to take off, then every card produced by credit card companies in the future needs to include a contactless chip. More importantly, consumers using the card need to be better educated on how to recognize the card and how to use it. Those were just a couple of tips delivered by an executive from a major takeout restaurant chain at the recent CTST show in Orlando.

One problem is that despite promotional efforts from the major credit card issuers about simply tapping a contactless card against a reader, more education is still needed–among consumers and store employees.


During the CTST show co-sponsored by the Smart Card Alliance and SourceMedia, Gavin Waugh, vice president and assistant treasurer for Arby’s Restaurant Group, described his company’s experiences with contactless cards. It wasn’t pretty and shows that contactless technology has a long way to go before it comes close to equaling payments made the mag stripe way.

The company has implemented contactless at its 1,000 corporate-owned stores with 100% inside the restaurants, and just 80% installation at its drive-throughs. He said that some existing stores’ drive through areas weren’t conducive to having a contactless reader which could have caused longer lines. The company’s franchise operations aren’t required to implement contactless technology. While he did not present figures on the number of franchisees, he did say there was interest from them to implement contactless.

There are 533 words in the rest of this article …

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Sticking to its plan for a contactless rollout in 2012, Australian retailer Coles has selected Ingenico to provide its Ingenico iPP350 contactless payment terminals.

According to finextra.com, the Aussie retailer first piloted the technology in September 2011, and has since decided to expand. All business groups will deploy the new iPP350 across 24,000 lanes within the next few months, making the retailer one of the first in Australia to offer the contactless payment option.

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Research and Markets announced the addition of a report concerning the latest state of the Polish contactless payment market.

Entitled “Polish Contactless Payments Market 2011: Issuance, Transactions and Innovations” the report presents detailed analysis based on surveys carried out among all banks issuing contactless payment instruments and acquirers that operated contactless payments on the Polish market.

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Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard’s head of Emerging Payments, has some good news for those waiting on NFC-enabled phones for contactless payments.

In an interview with Fast Company, McLaughlin said that he didn’t know of a handset maker who wasn’t working on integrating support for PayPass contactless payments.

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McDonald’s and Barclaycard are gearing up to launch NFC awareness campaigns aimed at spurring the adoption of contactless payment technology, according to MarketingWeek.

Barclaycard, which holds the highest share (71%) of the UK contactless market, reports that contactless transactions have doubled in the last year, but are still “nowhere near” where they want to be, according to Tom Gregory, Barclaycard’s head of digital payments.

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Ottowa’s Spoonity is gearing up to launch an NFC-based mobile rewards program for local restaurants and cafés, reports Katana EMC.

In October, Spoonity received a $30,000 grant to develop the mobile system, which it plans to roll out early next year. In the meantime the start-up has introduced a card-based version that enables customers to ditch their various loyalty cards in favor of a single Spoonity key fob.

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Superdrug, one of Britain’s largest beauty and health retailers, has introduced contactless payment for its in-store customers, according to Retail Gazette.

Created by Streamline and Visa Europe, the contactless system will enable customers to make payments of up to £15 (approx. USD $23) by simply waving their contactless bank card at the more than 50 participating Superdrug stores in London and Liverpool.

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