03 March 2009 News

 

Barclays customers go contactless

Barclays customers will find the already short period of time spent at a till when paying by debit card even shorter from this week onwards, as they start to receive Visa debit cards with new built-in contactless technology.

The bank claims to be the first in the UK to roll-out the new technology to its customers as a standard feature of most new and replacement debit cards from March 2, 2009. Up to three million customers are expected to be using contactless debit cards by the end of the year and the majority of Barclays debit card customers will have contactless cards by 2011.

The new cards include contactless technology as an additional feature which allows the card to make transactions of £10 or less by holding it up to a special reader, without the need to enter a PIN or insert the card into a terminal. The cards will continue to work as normal for chip and PIN transactions, ATM withdrawals and other functions.

Barclays customers should receive their new contactless card as and when their current cards need replacing, for example when it expires, is lost or damaged. New customers signing up to a Barclays current account from today will also receive the new type of card.

Currently around 8,000 retailers aaccept contactless payments. Barclaycard introduced contactless technology on credit cards in September 2007 with the launch of Barclaycard OnePulse, the three in one oyster, credit and contactless card. All Barclaycard Platinum cards now include contactless technology, and over 1.5 million Barclaycards in issue are now contactless-enabled.