Barclays customers will find paying by debit card gets a little easier from this week as they start to receive Visa debit cards with new built-in contactless technology.
The bank is the first in the UK to roll-out the new technology to its customers as a standard feature of most new and replacement debit cards from today. Up to three million customers are expected to be using contactless debit cards by the end of the year and the majority of Barclays debit card customers will have contactless cards by 2011.
The new cards include contactless technology as an additional feature which allows the card to make transactions of £10 or less by holding it up to a special reader, without the need to enter a PIN or insert the card into a terminal. The cards will continue to work as normal for chip and PIN transactions, ATM withdrawals and other functions.
Barclays customers will receive their new contactless card as and when their current cards need replacing, for example when it expires, is lost or damaged. New customers signing up to a Barclays current account from today will also receive the new type of card.
Currently around 8,000 retailers already accept contactless payments including many outlets of Pret A Manger, Coffee Republic, EAT, Books etc, Krispy Kreme, Threshers and thousands of independent retailers, with more installing the technology every week.
Barclaycard introduced contactless technology on credit cards in September 2007 with the launch of Barclaycard OnePulse, the three in one oyster, credit and contactless card. All Barclaycard Platinum cards now include contactless technology, and over 1.5 million Barclaycards in issue are now contactless-enabled.