Contactless payments need a push
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Tom Gregory from Barclaycard is right in saying that driving awareness is key to increasing take-up of contactless payment (‘Brands get behind push for contactless’, MW 19 January) but it’s not the only factor.
More card providers must give their users the opportunity to use contactless payment, and more retailers must accept this payment method, for the market to reach its full potential.
With big name retailers already leading the way by installing the technology to enable customers to ‘tap and go’, it is likely that the others will follow.
The combination of increased awareness, more cards issued and more retailers involved will go some way to supporting BlackBerry’s prediction that 2012 will be the “year of NFC”.
Rachelle Smith
Director retail and ecommerce
PrePay Solutions
Readers' comments (1)
Gary Yamamura | Thu, 2 Feb 2012 8:56 pm
I fear that the theory of "if we build it and promote it they will come" will continue to be false for the foreseeable future. Although only time will tell, I believe that without a compelling incentive to change, neither merchants nor consumers will actively use their contactless cards or NFC devices for payment in existing contactless systems. Having been an insider on several other payment technology introductions, I have seen equally good solutions fail after launching on the same theory. Contactless technologies (including those designed to meet the NFC standards) are amazing but, by themselves, offer little or no advantage to consumers or retail merchants.
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