Spar UK, with 2,600 stores in the UK, claims it is leading the way in the convenience sector with the introduction of an integrated contactless EFT payment solution it has developed with IT partner BCP (Business Computer Projects Ltd) for its SPARPoS store solution.
Contactless payment is one of the latest developments in payment technology utilising an embedded RFID chip on payment cards in combination with the normal EMV chip to enable customers to pay securely by waving their card over a reader at the point of sale.
Benefits include faster transactions, lower transaction fees and some research suggests consumers are likely to spend more due to the ease of small transactions.
Speed and convenience at the point of sale and a limit of £15 per transaction make Contactless payment ideal for quick service businesses with low value transactions, such as c-stores.
A range of stand-alone contactless solutions are available, but Spar’s integrated SPARPoS solution is believed to a first in the c-store sector.
Integrating directly to the till system, it provides additional benefits over stand alone offerings – increased speed, reduced training requirements, elimination of errors from having to re-key transactions and, of particular importance, it provides a full and secure audit trail of card payments taken through the PoS, thereby eliminating reconciliation issues.
Roy Ford, Spar UK’s retail IT controller, said: “This is a SPARPoS consortium funded project aimed at reducing EFT transaction cost for Spar Card Services Retailers. We introduced it at our Haymarket store in central London, followed quickly by three other London Spar stores, where the contactless payment trials took place.
“The system will be rolled out, as appropriate, to other Spar stores so our customers can take advantage of contactless payment at their local store as their regular credit and debit cards are replaced by ‘contactless’ enabled cards and the stores can benefit from reduced transaction costs.
“We identified the contactless opportunity early and worked with our IT partner BCP to build this into our SPARPoS solution. I am told by RBS that we are the first in our marketplace to ‘integrate’ contactless payment and this provides the first steps to reducing transaction cost for Debit Cards for Spar retailers – up to 40% cheaper than standard debit transactions – as well as allowing us to serve customers faster.”
Source: Spar
