Customer Service

Making the move to contactless payments

Andrew Jamieson, technology and security director at UL, maps out how retailers can deploy contactless payment options with little pain and meet customer expectations.

Photo by istock.com

December 16, 2020 by Andrew Jamieson — Technology and Security Director, UL

Although already popular in many areas of the world, there's been a significant increase in the use and acceptance of contactless payments within the US over this year.

Obviously, the global pandemic has played a part in this, with customers eager to purchase goods and services in the most 'contact free' way possible, but the security and convenience of contactless provides significant benefits to the consumer as well. As a retailer, how do you best facilitate the use of contactless payment in your environment to help with this migration?

The first step is understanding that contactless payments are easy … once you know what you're doing. The first few attempts at making a contactless payment can often be less than successful, with the customer not knowing exactly where to place the card, when to use it, or for how long they hold it within that sweet spot to ensure the payment goes through.

So, it can be helpful to ensure that there is scope for customers to 'try' out their new contactless cards in your store, with the ability to easily fall back to a more familiar payment option if they have trouble. It should only take a few attempts for customers to become familiar with the process and then they'll be using contactless all the time!

Along similar lines, it's important to ensure your staff are educated on how contactless works as well. Do they know where the card should be held so they can help the customer if there are issues? Will the checkout staff be taking the customer card and using it themselves? If so, that may reduce the appeal of contactless during these times — best to position the payment terminals so the customer can perform the transaction without someone else touching or taking hold of their card.

This speaks to the correct positioning of the payment terminal itself. Some stores may have terminals that accept all of magnetic stripe, contact chip, and contactless chip transactions. Each of these methods of payment often use a different area of the terminal, implying increased space around the device to allow for the card to be presented for that method of payment. How are your terminals positioned in your store? Will they need to be moved for contactless payments? Is there enough space for customers who are both left and right handed to hold their cards over the terminal interface without having to contort themselves into some strange payment-yoga position?

What if the customer is paying with something that is not a card?

One of the benefits of contactless transactions, from a customer point of view, is the ability to use different formfactors for payment — watches, phones, stickers, rings, etc. However, not all of these implementations work exactly the same as a contactless card. It's important for merchants to know what types of payment instruments they can accept, and what testing has been done to validate they work correctly with their payment terminals.

The challenge of contactless payment is that it must work each time, every time. Customers wanting to pop into a bakery or coffee shop when on their morning jog or bicycle ride must have confidence that if they've only got their phone on them, that's going to work to make the payment. This is certainly achievable, it's worked in many other places around the world where contactless transactions are over 80% of all in-store payments, but it does not happen without some effort on the part of the merchant.

By ensuring you have the right equipment, training your staff to know how to use it or support customers in doing the same, and providing customers with a 'safe' environment in which to try out their new payment options, you can be sure they'll be back again for that coffee tomorrow.

Andrew Jamieson is technology and security director at UL.