By Andy McCue, 15 June 2006 14:05
NEWS
The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and MasterCard are to trial an RFID-based contactless debit card to replace cash for low-value payments.
The trial of the Oyster card-style payment system begins next week at RBS' head office campus in Edinburgh, which contains a number of retail outlets for its 3,000 staff based there.
The retail stores taking part include Starbucks and Tesco Express. The bank said 1,000 staff have so far applied for one of the specially adapted Maestro chip and PIN debit cards.
An aerial in the card transmits the data to a reader at the retail store and RBS staff taking part in the pilot project will only have to wave their debit card against the reader when paying for goods instead of signing a receipt or entering a PIN number.
RBS spokesman David Outhwaite told silicon.com: "It means consumers don't need to have a pocket full of change and it's a speedier system for retailers."
The system will only be available for transactions up to £10 and there will be random security checks where users will be asked to enter their PIN number to confirm they are the cardholder.
The MasterCard-led initiative has been trialled elsewhere around the world but the RBS pilot, which is due to run for the rest of the year, is the first time it has been used in the UK.
Outhwaite said the aim of the trial is to look at eliminating the need for money for low-value transactions as part of the move towards a "cashless society".
He said: "It's to see how UK consumers use it and how it works in different environments."
Comments
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1. Graham Coles
It should be interesting to see how quickly the system is broken.
RFID tags can be read from quite a few metres away from the source and these devices don’t appear to need any authentication. I doubt it will take long before scammers start stealing the money from peoples pockets as they walk by!
Looks like pickpocketing for the 21st century is destined to be a de-skilled hobby.
2. anonymous
Wow. Lets see, 2 seconds max to enter a PIN, 1 seconds to 'wave' a card. So you save a whole 1 second max per transaction.
Maybe they should put their efforts into getting the queues down?
3. anonymous
At least people will stop crowding at the tills now - otherwise they may end up paying for the goods bought by the person in front!
4. Tim Lambertstock
The technology will be Near Field Communications (NFC) http://www.nfc-forum.org/home which is a specific type of RFID and the cards will have to be touched on the reader similar to an Oyster card. This is the future for low value payments and we will see a lot more activity in the next few months!