Poundland is trialling contactless payment technology at two of its London shops as it seeks to cut queues at its checkouts.
Working with Commidea, Poundland has upgraded the EPoS systems in its Dalston and Hammersmith shops to take contactless payment.
For payments of £10 or less, shoppers can hold a contactless-enabled debit or credit card against a reader, meaning customers do not have to use a PIN or sign for their goods.
Poundland IT services manager Mo Rahman said: “The emphasis for us will be on throughput — the transactions are quicker and therefore the number of people waiting at checkouts will be reduced and we will be able to get more people through the checkouts.”
The trial – which uses the Verifone QX110 contactless terminal, which is fully compliant with the payment card industry data security standard – is expected to run for six months.
However, as the penetration of contactless cards among consumers is not progressing as quickly as some card issuers had anticipated, Rahman said the trial could be extended to 12 months to gather sufficient date to evaluate its success.
Poundland will consider rolling out contactless payment to all stores if successful. Rahman said: “If the uptake is huge, we’ll obviously roll it out nationally to every single store. But the question remains about how much of a big bang we have – whether we do every single checkout or whether we have a point of presence in each store.”
Several major retailers have run contactless payment trials, but few have so far invested in full roll-outs of the technology. Payment card providers have also been encouraging the adoption of payment technology as a way of speeding up small transactions.
Boots is to pilot a scheme in October in Liverpool, where six shops will be set up with contactless payment as part of a Merseyside project involving the Royal Bank of Scotland, which will issue contactless cards in the area.
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