The Co-operative Pharmacy is to trial contactless payment in its branches after joining forces with Barclaycard.
Contactless payment allows customers to make purchases of £15 or less, without the need to enter a PIN or insert their card into a payment terminal.
Once the card has been held over the contactless terminal, the secure transaction uses the tried and tested Chip and PIN technology to automatically add the purchase to the customer’s credit card bill or debit it from their current account.
The trial will incorporate all contactless bank cards and will begin in approximately 50 Co-operative Pharmacy branches early next year after an agreement was signed with Barclaycard in partnership with Visa.
If this is successful, The Co-operative Pharmacy hopes to roll out the technology to more than 500 branches by March 2011 before implementing it across the whole estate.
Chris Brooker, business development director at The Co-operative Pharmacy, said: “We are excited to be trialling this unique payment method, which has received an excellent reception from both customers and retailers where it has been launched overseas.
“The project is part of our ongoing investment to improve our customer service in the communities we serve.”
Contactless payment will also improve customer satisfaction as research has shown that a large number of customers will walk out of a shop due to excessive queue length.
Source: The Co-operative
