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It is designed to establish what services and functionality consumers would like from a Near Field Communications (NFC) phone. Participants have been given a Nokia 6131 – NFC, installed with multiple NFC applications including Oyster, which they will use in a range of ways to test out different services in London. In order to make this as comprehensive a pilot as possible, O2 has brought together a broad range of partners, including Visa Europe, Transport for London, TranSys, Barclaycard, Nokia and AEG.
For Phase I of the trial (November to February), 225 people have been given a Barclaycard Visa pre-paid card loaded on their handset, enabling them to use it to make cashless payments under £10 at retail outlets in London which currently accept Visa payWave transactions. Everyone participating in the trial will be asked to provide feedback on the services, in particular how easy and useful they find them and how safe and confident they feel using them. The O2 Wallet is scheduled to be commercially available by the end of 2008/early 2009.
Retail Systems has thus far found the trial to be a generally positive one, with no problems utilising the Oyster card aspect of the O2 Wallet. As any self-respecting Londoner will tell you, it’s a brave man or woman who risks holding up the tube/bus queue with a ticket (or, even worse, new fangled technology) that doesn’t work. But we are made of stern stuff and decided to ride out any disapproving stares and muttered insults that might come our way – thankfully, we sailed through at the first attempt. Subsequent attempts have also been problem-free.
Unfortunately, the cashless payment part of the trial has not been so straightforward. Recent months have seen numerous press releases announcing the wide range of shops, including Books etc, Coffee Republic, EAT, Krispy Kreme and Threshers, who are onboard. But a visit to our local branch of Books etc (to buy a copy of Charlie Brooker’s excellent Dawn of the Dumb, in case you’re interested) proved to be a frustrating experience, drawing a blank stare from the staff member who was asked about the shop’s cashless machine. As it turned out that they didn’t have this in place and the same thing applied to the EAT and Krispy Kreme that we visited.
A spokesperson for Visa comments that contactless payments have been introduced to the capital over the past couple of months as a gradual roll-out starting in areas close to the mainline train stations where low value payments are common place. It expects to see other major cities and towns adopt contactless payments once news of the London launch spreads.
To date there are around 3,000 Visa payWave terminals around London which equates to 2,500 merchants signed up to accepting contactless payments and numbers are rising. The names
of many participating merchants are listed on www.visapaywave.co.uk and participants in the 02 Wallet trial can use their handset to search for contactless retail outlets by postcode. “Visa is working together with its banks and the other card payment schemes to encourage more retailers to sign up to accepting contactless cards,” the spokesperson says. “As with all new technologies it takes time for widespread adoption to take place but, according to APACS, cardholders are expected to have access to contactless cards from the majority of issuers within the next five years.”
In the next issue of Retail Systems, we will take a look at Phase II of the trial, which runs from February to May 2008 and could include PIN capability, over £10 purchases and reloadable/credit funds capability.
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