Bristol-based mobile phone group Orange has teamed up with Barclaycard to launch a service that enables customers to make payments over the counter of up to £15 using their mobile phones.
Fast-food chains McDonald’s, Subway and Pret a Manger as well as some branches of Boots – together totalling 50,000 retail outlets – have signed up for the service called Quick Tap. It will let shoppers with Orange or Barclaycards load up to £100 on their mobiles. The payments processing will be handled by Mastercard.
Quick Tap payments will be done through the SIM card — which is the property of the operators, in this case Orange — and customers will have the option to set up a PIN number to be entered before each payment for extra security.
Orange, which has a big presence in north Bristol, and Barclays see it as a way of attracting and retaining customers – but customers will need a Samsung Tocco Lite phone to start with although handsets from other manufacturers, such as Nokia, will follow.
Mobile payments based on near field communications (NFC) technology have existed for almost a decade in some developing countries where many people have no bank account but the idea has not caught on in more prosperous areas such as Europe where many other payment options already exist. However, a new version of Google’s popular Android smartphone software, which is used by dozens of phone makers, includes support for NFC, prompting this new initiative.
Datamonitor analyst Giles Ubaghs expects take-up to be sluggish. He said: “It is an important first step but I think there could be a lack of incentive. Early adopters may like it for the novelty value but the majority just won’t see the point.”
It is expected that transactions, transport and tickets will all be available in the UK via contactless technology by the middle of next year – but with around 12.9 million credit and debit card already in circulation and currently just 50,000 stores with NFC-enabled readers in the UK, it could be a while before the idea takes off.
