Gaga For Cashless: Retailers Gearing Up for Near Field Communications (NFC)

05-21-2011 • thenextweb.com/uk

Back in January, we reported Everything Everywhere – the parent company of Orange and T-Mobile – was teaming up with Barclaycard to make Near Field Communications (NFC) payments a reality for its customers. For those of you that don’t know, NFC payments mean that customers don’t need to use cash or credit cards, they simply swipe their mobile phones across a special handset at the checkout, and voila. And today, Orange and Barclaycard officially launched ‘Quick Tap‘, which is the UK’s first contactless mobile phone payments service. The service is designed for small purchases of under £15, and contactless readers will be available at over 50,000 UK stores. You’ll know that a store has the special reader when it displays the contactless payments symbol, and Pret A Manger, Eat and Subway are among the outlets to have signed up already. Quick Tap uses a secure SIM-based approach to mobile payments, and Orange customers will require a ‘Quick Tap’ enabled handset. The scheme launches with a Quick Tap enabled version of the Samsung Tocco Lite, and the device will be available on pay as you go and pay monthly price plans. More handsets are expected to follow from a selection of manufacturers. Barclaycard, Barclays debit or Orange Credit Card users can transfer funds of up to £100 simply and securely onto the handset’s Quick Tap app, after which the phone is ready to make payments of £15 and under in a single transaction.