Whitbread serves up £1m saving on card payments

Hospitality group Whitbread has deployed an end-to-end card payment system that is expected to save it £1m per year in payments processing costs.

Exclusive Special Report: CIO Agenda 2008

Find out what's hot on the top tech execs' agendas for 2008…

♦  Video: CIO Agenda 2008

♦  Naked CIO: The true cost of IT

♦  Why IT must escape the belt-tightening

♦  Cost-cutting tops CIO priorities

♦  Recession fears hit IT budgets

♦  What governance can really mean to business

♦  The CIO shopping list

The system - supplied by Fidelity National Information services, IBM, Smart Technology solutions and VeriFone - is an integrated mobile chip and PIN payments system that allows the company to channel all payments from its Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Costa Coffee through a single payments process.

The system should remove opportunities for manual error along the payments chain and deliver quicker payments to customers.

The implementation has also given the hospitality company the opportunity to upgrade 90 per cent of its card readers to Payment Card Industry standard.

Previously, the group was settling transactions with bank-owned PDQ terminals.

Additionally, Whitbread will be able to use centrally stored payments data to track and analyse customer spending behaviours.

The first phase roll out of the system is slated for completion within May. A fourth division, Premier Inns business units, will be upgraded to the system later this year.

Whitbread information systems project manager, Steven Deakin, said in a statement: "Deployment of the integrated payment solution is a groundbreaking step for the leisure industry and means we have the first large restaurant chain with a completely integrated mobile chip and PIN solution. Movement away from 'swipe and sign' in our restaurants means we are no longer liable for fraudulent payments and have also benefited from an improvement in transaction rates as a result of the shift."