Visa Europe and Streamline have announced that their partnership with British retailers will be extended to carry out a further roll out of their contactless payment solution.
The rollout follows the success of an initial launch, which Visa’s NFC POS solution deployed to over 600 shops across the country. The retail giant also equipped all its Northern Ireland shops with contactless POS terminals.
Jonathan Vardon, IT Director, Boots UK commented, “We are very pleased that our contactless payment roll out is making good progress. Our aim is to offer customers a great shopping experience with quick, easy ways to pay and we believe that contactless payment is one way to deliver this as the technology has helped to reduce transaction and queuing times. We know that our customers want us to offer an unrivalled choice of services and products and we hope they will enjoy the benefits of using contactless technology in our store.”
Visa Europe defended that 2012 was a “tipping point for UK contactless transactions”, which now amount to more than 2.5 million a month. Contactless has begun to take off in the country thanks to other large scale rollouts from retailers like Marks&Spencer’s, McDonald’s, as well as London buses.
Darren Wilson, Managing Director, Streamline, said, “Contactless technology is becoming increasingly popular on the high street as an efficient alternative to carrying cash. As the number one card acquirer in the UK and Europe, we have seen volumes of contactless transactions increase six-fold in the past year and are regularly processing over two million contactless transactions per month
For 2013, Visa predicts that contactless cards will reach 34 million units in the UK, and 70 million across Europe. Contactless terminals are to reach 175,000 by the end of the year. Visa Europe also predicts that, by 2020, half of the transactions on their network will be carried through a mobile device.
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