Contactless paying. What is it?
Barclays and Barclaycard are leading the way with a new means of payment. Contactless cards have now been given to around 6 million customers. Halifax, HSBC and Royal Bank of Scotland are also trialling contactless cards.
Contactless cards are a new kind of plastic card which allows you to pay by tapping the card on the reader. It is very quick and convenient for customers because it doesn’t need chip and PIN.
This is a very safe transaction because security is paramount with any kind of payment innovation. There are 3 layers of security.
The first is the data that is held on the same kind of encrypted chip that has always been used and this is highly secure.
The second is that it is set up so that a person can only make a number of contactless transactions before they are asked for their chip and PIN.
Any then finally of course, as with all Barclaycards, it’s a 100% insured against fraud, so if it was stolen you’d simply tell us the card was missing and we would cover that, not you as a customer.
If you receive a contactless card from your bank, it will contain a symbol, a little ripple symbol, and this tells you it can be used on a terminal at a retailer that has that symbol on it.
Not all retailers accept this card as yet, but they are changing over very quickly as the contactless card rolls out across the country.
So, where is this all leading? Well, if you can tap a card, you can tap a mobile phone and plans are already in the works for that.