Spar to roll out contactless payment in the UK

Spar is rolling out contactless payment across its 2,600 stores and claiming a convenience first in the UK.

Contactless payment technology uses 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.

According to Spar, benefits include faster transactions, lower transaction fees with some research suggesting consumers are likely to spend more due to the ease of small transactions.

Spar said 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.

Spar’s roll out follows a trial in four stores in London. Its solution has been developed with IT partner BCP (Business Computer Projects) for the retailer’s SPARPoS store solution and is believed to a first in the c-store sector.

The system integrates with the till system, providing increased speed and reduced training requirement. It is also claimed to eliminate errors from rekeying transactions and provide a secure audit trail of card payments taken through the PoS, removing reconciliation issues.

Roy Ford, Spar UK 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.”

Ford said the system will be rolled out, as appropriate, to other Spar stores to enable customers to take advantage of contactless payment at their local store as their 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.”

Spar: contactless roll out
Contactless payment: ideal for quick service, low value transactions in c-stores