Barclaycard trials contactless payment gloves
Barclaycard is launching a trial of innovative gloves that allow people to pay contactlessly for their Christmas shopping.
The move follows a survey of 2,000 people on their Christmas shopping habits where “gloves you could pay with” were voted the most popular wearable item consumers would like to see created, followed by rings and bracelets.
Barclaycard has developed a small number of ‘pay-glove’ prototypes which are being trialled as a test-and-learn exercise across some of the UK’s 300,000 contactless locations during the busy Christmas shopping period.
The woollen gloves, which are also touchscreen-enabled, are embedded with a bPay contactless chip that can be linked to a credit or debit card and used to pay for transactions of up to £20.
Mike Saunders, managing director of digital consumer payments at Barclaycard, explained: “At some point most of us have experienced the stress of holding bags full of shopping while trying to find a spare hand to get our card out of our purse or wallet to pay. Some may have even been subjected to frustration from those piling up in the queue behind them! So when people told us that being able to pay with gloves would take some of the stress out of their Christmas shopping, we wanted to respond positively to shoppers’ demand.
“The ‘pay gloves’ we’re trialling are designed to let shoppers ‘tap, pay and go’ even when their hands are full of shopping. If the prototype is popular, these handy winter warmers could be bringing some festive cheer to bag-laden shoppers by Christmas 2015!”
The survey also reveals that 74% of shoppers polled cited queuing as their biggest pet hate when Christmas shopping. In addition, 41% rated overcrowded shops as their biggest bugbear while 36% cited unfriendly or unhelpful checkout staff.
