Contactless Payment (look, no hands!)

Bring on the flying cars and space food, the future is here… Contactless payment with your  debit card is going to change the way we pay, in a technological advancement to reach a par with (or exceed) the convenience of online retail.

Debit cards have become four times as popularity as credit cards since 1999, and secure electronic payment such as PayPal, Verified by Visa and the other range of channels available online have become second nature to us. E-commerce (and soon, m-commerce) is overtaking traditional retail as the method of choice for researching and purchasing goods, for its ease and convenience. Regular, real life stores, therefore, are reassessing their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) strategies to compete. We recently talked about the integration of multi-channel transactions in our m-commerce post, and stores are also looking to technology to increase the usability of their interactions in store, for example:

• Loyalty schemes
• Touch screens for stock checking, product information or reserving items
• Self-service tills

Perhaps it's a sad sign that we are moving away from almost any human exchange whilst shopping, but entirely electronic payment is becoming more popular – self-service tills are available in most large supermarkets, meaning you don't theoretically require the services of a staff member at any point in your transaction.

As well as making our shopping experience smoother, technology is speeding up the way we pay. Cash is, apparently, a bit passé. Small change is annoying for customers to carry around, and equally irritating for those in the queue behind anyone counting out their pennies at the till. Cash ironically costs retailers time and money to process too, and paying by card is massively on the increase. The only problem area is paying for small amounts with your debit card – often risking a charging for less than the minimum payment. So, in steps Contactless Cards – omitting the need for entering a pin number for amounts up to £15; instead, you merely hold your card over a wireless reader, cutting the time it takes to pay by almost half and removing the need to carry around lots of small change.

Actually, it's been around for a while – since the mid 90s in fact, and banks have been using them in the UK since 2007. 9-12 million cards have been issued so far, meaning 1 in 6 of us in the UK already have one (including me, though I didn't know it until I wrote this article) and though use in the majority of stores is still fairly limited to only 50,000 tills currently processing them in the UK, this figure is likely to double by 2011.

So far we have the options of PayWave by Visa, and mastercard's PayPass, both of which give itemised details of what customers and spending and where. The technology is proven and stable, and will soon be incorporated into mobile phones, enabling the same ‘hands-free' Near Field Technology (NFT) for small payments, creating a ‘Virtual Wallet' out of your phone. Beyond that lies Visa Codesure, a payment card which has its own integrated keypad and digital display.

Contactless payment hopes to increase speed of transaction and provide better customer service – it seems ideal for retail in a hurry to minimise queuing such as: public transport (London tubes and buses are hoping to utilise the technology soon); coffee shops; fast food restaurants; newsagents and convenience stores; pharmacies and supermarkets.

Whether this will even the scores between traditional retail and its main competitor, e-commerce, remains to be seen, though it's certain to close the divide somewhat. Will it mean that e-commerce will become even faster and easier in response, perhaps following in Amazon's ‘one-click-payment' footsteps? For any e-commerce retailer, there are ways to increase the usability and convenience of your checkout stage(s), and optimise the chance of conversions, for example:

• Getting rid of required registration – just get them to the checkout!
• Encourage trust by offering no quibble, free returns and money back guarantees
• Keep shipping low-cost and as fast as you can make it
• Provide accurate representations and clear images of your products/services
• Enable customers to get in contact easily and promise a quick response
• Keep your checkout screens in a familiar format – we naturally distrust pages which look different to what we are used to seeing in internet retail
• Use SEO to optimise your site to increase ranking on SERPs and strengthen your brand authority
• Integrate Social Media into your marketing campaign to connect with and engage customers on a personal level

And finally, a little invention of my own: barcode scanning lasers implanted in our brains which shoot out of our eyeballs for psychic payment when we see something we like. Too soon? Ah, I'm way ahead of my time…