Fast-food restaurant, McDonald’s, has reported that nine per cent of its UK customers are making card payments in-store, after it installed chip-and-PIN card readers
“The key is to make paying by card as quick as paying with cash”, says McDonalds’ IS manager, Steve Tiley, since customers want to speed through the store as if using a drive-through service. Over 100,000 retailers and restaurants now accept chip-and-PIN payments, according to APACS, with grocery retailer, Safeway, having upgraded card terminals in all its UK stores, and expecting to save Stg 548,000 per year on paper for card receipts.
Major retailer, Marks & Spencer reportedly said that some chip card readers were pulling the chips off some cards, but consumers appear to be taking to the new cards, after needing an average of 3 tries to get comfortable with the new system. Publicans upgrading their POS software for the migration of Switch debit cards to the Maestro brand are also adapting their terminals for chip-and-PIN payments, according to reports. The major UK banks are also planning an advertising campaign for the national rollout of chip and PIN payments, with 50 per cent of credit cardholders expected to have PIN-enabled cards by mid-year.
Without PIN-secured card payments, APACS predicts that the UK’s card fraud rate would exceed Stg 1 billion per year, up from last year’s Stg 424 million, but is confident that the move to chip cards will cut fraud by 50 to 80 per cent. Card-not-present fraud is still a problem, but Early Warning, the UK scheme to notify e-tailers of CNP fraud, reports that it saved its members more than Stg 2 million by issuing fraud alerts over 18 months. Early Warning, which has several hundred active members, including IT firms, enables e-tailers to check their online credit card orders against a database of confirmed card frauds.
The Evening Standard
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