We’d all, I’m sure, prefer a world in which children did not have access to corrosive and nauseating material that undermines our civilised society. But how can we stop children from seeing MTV and the Daily Mail? The government has given up on this, I’m afraid, and has instead decided to try to stop them from seeing porn.
There has been a lot of discussion about using Host Card Emulation (HCE) to support EMV payments over Near-Field Communication (NFC) interfaces. But HCE can be used to support EMV payments over, essentially, any interface. As part of Consult Hyperion’s prototyping programme, we developed a working (ie, using EMV data) proof-of-concept demonstrator (running on Android and iPhone) for paying with HCE over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and showed it at the UK Cards Association last week. The demonstrator is so cool it superconducts.
Bitcoin may never be the best retail payments mechanism, but that doesn’t matter, because retail payments aren’t really what it is all about.
One of the things that a digital wallet can do better than a leather one is manage receipts.
Legal businesses want electronic payments. No two ways about it.
Contactless is not only quicker and easier than chip and PIN, it’s quicker and easier than notes and coins. It’s taking us one step closer to cashlessness. Hurrah!
We went off to Britain’s first robopub to have a pie and a pint and to watch the Blues demolish West Ham. Oh, and to see next-generation hospitality retailing in action.
By happy coincidence, the evening that we decided to go and try out Britain’s first robopub – The Thirsty Bear in Southwark – solely in the pursuit of retail payments knowledge, and incurred certain entertainment expenses wholly and necessarily in connection with our principal business, was the evening that Manchester City were playing their League Cup semi-final second leg against West Ham. Perfect. We had a lovely pint or two, an excellent helping of haddock and chips with New Labour guacamole (or mushy peas, as the dish is known in the far North) and excellent company and conversation for the night. And as if we couldn’t have made the event even more English had we tried, the footie was live on the big screen in the upstairs lounge.
The first thing that you will notice about The Thirsty Bear is that the tables have one iPad and two beer taps (one bitter, one lager) on them. The two are interconnected in an Internet of Grog, as will be revealed shortly. In the centre of the table is small credit-card sized recess. Here’s how it all works…
When you go in, you give them a payment card and they give you a contactless card, called a “Tab”. I assume they auth the card at that point but forgot to ask. You find a table and sit down and put your Tab in the recess in the centre of the table. At this point the table is activated and you can either pull your own pint from the on-table taps (the iPd displays as flow meter so you can see how much you are pouring) or you can use the iPad on a rotating mount in the centre of the table to order food, drinks and sundries. The iPad showed you customer ratings for the ales on offer and we could have punched up a couple of pints of wallop but we preferred the time-honoured method of asking me in host to recommend beverages. He suggested real ale for the men and white wine or a fruit-based cocktail for the ladies, so we went with the darker of Windsor & Eton Canberras on offer. I can personally attest to its quality.
If you go to another table, you can buy the drinks there by putting your Tab down. Similarly, if its someone else’s round at the table, you pick up your Tab and they put down theirs. Whatever is ordered/pumped at the table is added to the Tab. Simple. The table tablet has other functionality, aside from Facebook and Twitter access. A couple of twitter correspondents asked if there was a pub quiz or similar and there wasn’t, although I mentioned this to the software guys and they agreed this might be a good idea. It did have a jukebox app connected to the pub sound system but, oddly, it didn’t have any Hawkwind on it.
We then chose some food from the attractive and well-presented screens. A great system, especially because the menus are updated in real time so as they sell-out of various dishes the menu reflects this. I can see that, if properly handled, the use of differential pricing might be a very interesting development.
A great pub with great beer, great food and great technology. When we were chatting about it afterwards, a couple of people did wonder why they bothered with the Tab card, since everyone in the pub had a smartphone (so an HCE pub app would have done the trick) and most of them would have had a contactless card as well, so why not just use those? I expect they’re right and in time the tablets and the card will probably vanish. But for the time being, this is a pretty convenient way to order and pay.
I had the opportunity to chat to the manager of the pub and he told me that 55% of sales come through the tablets and 45% over the bar. He was very enthusiastic about the infrastructure. These are tough times for pubs in the UK but here they have year-on-year growth in sales. The manager attributed this to uplift at the tables (especially amongst groups after work or watching the football) and more room at the bar (since the bar is not as crowded there is more walk-in trade). I liked it a lot. We’ll be back.
The Target breach will encourage the US to adopt EMV, but it’s not a magic bullet. However, the breach may have wider implications for the future of retail transactions than EMV adoption.
Off to the Barclaycard Wireless Festival for the day. I don’t really understand why its still called that. In the old days, when it was sponsored by O2, then calling it the wireless festival sort of made sense. But now it’s sponsored by Barclaycard, they should probably call it the Contactless Festival instead. Anyhow it featured a great many very popular bands, as evidenced by the enormous crowd trying to get in.
I know it looks chaotic but in the end it only took about 25 minutes to get in. Contactless was much in evidence. Barclaycard had kitted all of the bars out with contactless terminals and were kind enough to give me one of the promotional lanyards containing a contactless card (a Visa gift card preloaded with £20) to go and try out. Which, naturally, I did. And, I have to say, it worked perfectly. As testimony, allow me to present the first beer I bought with it!
Being me, I couldn’t leave it at that though, and I started to try out some other contactless paraphernalia about my person. An obvious experiment was to try my Barclaycard phone, and that worked too, but oddly it went online, which rather slowed the transaction down. I don’t understand why it did this, so I’ll ask the chaps when I’m next in the office.
More interestingly, I asked a couple of the bar staff what they thought about contactless and they had both positive and negative observations that I promised myself to report in a spirit of openness and balance…
Positive. It’s quick, and you don’t have to hand the terminal to the customer for them to enter a PIN. And they thought my phone was really cool. They also said that some customers had been paying with their own contactless cards and not just the promotional lanyards.
Negative. There were two big issues that came up in both conversations with bar staff. One was the spending limit, which the bar staff said was too low at £12 (the limit was actually £15, but the all of the drinks cost £4, so you could buy three drinks at £12 but not the advertised four beers in a drinks carrier, because that costs £16). Surely it would have made sense to have subbed the bars so that four beers plus carrier was a £15 special.
Enough of these scientific experiments (most of which I drank), and off to see some of the popular beat combos on show. Here’s 47 second taster so that you can get the idea if you’ve never been to one of these events before.
I was reflecting on the security issue later on, because it really seemed a block. I took the time to explain to one of the women at the bar that there was no risk to her as a customer, because the UK banks’ were unequivocal about unauthorised use: if someone uses your card without your permission, they will refund the transaction. Yet she was unconvinced and was clearly uncomfortable about the idea of “no CVM” purchase. This has been true since the earliest days. As I highlighted four years ago:
Among those that are not yet ready to use contactless, security appear to be the dominant consideration. Which means, of course, that whatever we might think about actual security situation we must get better at communicating it.
[From Digital Money: Contactless update]
As I don’t know anything about customer communications and public information, I genuinely don’t know how to cross this chasm, but I wonder if it’s yet more evidence that we should be moving more quickly to contactless phones. The simple PIN code that I need to open up the mobile wallet on my Barclaycard MasterCard phone (the Samsung Tocco that I wrote about before) might well provide the reassurance that people want, even though it doesn’t really make much difference to the overall risk (phones are inherently safer than cards because people notice when they go missing anyway).
Overall, the weekend’s experiences did leave me with three firm conclusions:
1. Both the public and the merchants liked contactless. In this kind of environment – crowded, quick service – the technology performs very well. These were similar to the results seen elsewhere: the punters like contactless payments.
Festival-goers quizzed on the experience, said they were quicker (96%) and easier to use (98%) than credit or debit cards, while a resounding 100% said they’d want to use the PayPass prepaid wristbands again to pay at other festivals, concerts and sporting events.
[From Finextra: Contactless wristbands join wellies and camping gear as festival essentials]
2. We should accelerate the development of contactless phones, because they help with the security issue.
3. The Horrors are a good band, but not my cup of tea.
These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]
Act I, Scene I.
A Dashing Brit (DB) traveller in the Big Apple notices that the iconic New York yellow cab whisking him through the concrete canyons to his lodgings is fitted with a touch screen and a contactless card reader.
DB: “Can I pay by card?”
Taxi Driver: “You don’t have any cash, man?”
DB: “No, I just got here. You do take cards, right?”
Taxi Driver: “Yeah, but you know, they charge us like $5 to take your card…”
DB enters $5 tip on the touch screen, then, with a flourish, taps his iPhone fitted with a splendid MasterCard PayPass sticker against the reader. Nothing happens, until the transaction times out.
DB: “Can you do it again, thanks.”
Having asked the clearly exasperated driver to re-enter the transaction and trys both contactless Visa and contactless Amex cards. None of them work. In the DB sheepishly uses the magnetic stripe on his British Airways Amex cards and swipes his way to success. A receipt is printed, and DB goes on his way.
Act I, Scene II.
Broadway. It’s late, but the heat from the day’s sun is still leaking from the asphalt, bathing the pedestrians in an unwelcome June warmth. The street is a cacophony of voices, languages, dialects, creoles. In a few seconds, the sounds of conversation in German, Mandarin and Spanish drift by. A Dishevelled Bearded (DB) grey-haired sage is walking in the road because the sidewalk is full. He glances down a sidestreet and sees a garish sign, the gist of which is that Dunkin Donuts is open round the clock.
“What a country” he thinks to himself as he is drawn towards the light int he clutches of a tractor beam forged in primal fires from sugar and fat, “but I really do heart NY”.
He moves slowly, precisely to the racks of deep-fried delight on display. But he is momentarily distracted by what he thought was an advertising display but has now realised is an ATM. His chemically-dependent slavish devotion to the evil geniuses behind the brand goes to 11: they have their own-brand ATMs. The own-brand money cannot be far behind.
DB muttering: “What a country…”
He shakes his head and turns back to the massed ranks of super-dense calorie containers.
DB still muttering: “…what a country!”
Act I: Scene III.
It’s late June in New York. The heat is oppressive, the air pregnant with rain, a thunderstorm must come soon. A Distressed Businessperson (DB) on his way to an appointment, staggers into a west-side neighbourhood coffee shop. He stands in line, feeling the uncomfortable sensation of sweat running from his receding hairline to his eyebrows. Even with his advanced years, he can hardly not notice the scantily-clad, petite twentysomething blone woman in front of him. She addresses the Indian coffee cup server in a charming local manner.
Petite Blonde: “Just a cawfee, plenty of room for milk”
Indian Server: “$2.50”
The petite blonde proffers a debit card that prominently display the brand of a well-known internationally-famous banking house.
Indian Server: “Sorry, cash only”
Petite Blonde: “Are you serious? You’re kidding right?”
Indian Server: “No cards. You can use the ATM”
He waves toward and ATM that sits, with big red lettering in a strangely old-fashioned typeface, next to the cream and sugar station.
Petite Blonde: “Fugget it…”
She turns to leave, then hesitates and turns back, starting to open her wallet (for our English readers: purse).
Petite Blonde: “No, wait… maybe I got it”
She rummages in the wallet and eventually uncovers a dollar bill and some change. She hands to the Indian server and takes her coffee, while DB begins to rummage in his backpack, certain that he remembers seeing a $5 in his Moleskine yesterday.
Act I, Scene IV.
A Dog-Tired Backpacker (DB) is slumped at his breakfast table in a downtown Manhattan hotel. Unable to sleep, he has been awake since the early hours. Unable to concentrate on his tasks at hand, he has been composing nonsensical observations about financial services of niche interest, intending to foist them on an uncaring universe via a web log. All around him are the men and women who are the beating hearts of commerce and trade. Not all of them are international: one on a nearby table is American and he is yelling into his iPad, having a Facetime video conference with a colleague. At breakfast. In a public place. DB is driven from his Raisin Bran by this performance and stomps across to the coffee station to grab some Joe to go. In his haste to get away from the blockhead banging on about business prospects for the next quarter, he fails to attach the lid to the coffee cup securely, with the natural consequence that it falls off, and he slops coffee on his chinos.
On his way back to the room to attempt an emergency clean-up on Aisle 1, he remembers that he saw a men’s clothing store a block away. He heads overt here and finds a pair of Dockers in the right colour (ie, any) and the right size (REDACTED). He pays with his Amex card, because his John Lewis MasterCard was cancelled following a suspicious transaction and the replacement hasn’t arrived.
Menswear Assistant: “Cash or card?”
DB: “Card.”
DB takes his Amex and swipes it through the terminal in front of him. He is then invited to sign the large, clear screen using a plastic stylus. He does so (signing it, as always, “Snoopy Dogg” as a fraud prevention mechanism — if a fraudster steals the card, then they would sign it DB, because that’s the name on the card, thus any forensic investigation would immediately flag the transaction as bogus).
Menswear Assistant: “Thank you sir, please call again.”
DB wanders into Starbucks next door and orders a medium coffee with an extra shot and an oatmeal raison cookie.
Cheery Barrista: “$4.85 please”
DB hands over pre-paid US dollar Travelex MasterCard, which the Cheery Barrista swipes in an instant and returns.
Cheery Barrista: “Do you want a receipt?”
DB: “No thanks.”
Cheery Barrista: “Have a great day.”
DB turns toward to counter where patrons queue to pick up their completed beverage orders. He stops, puzzled, lost in thought. He thinks to himself “Hhhmmm… there’s no way that contactless technology is going to make that transaction any faster, and customers don’t care about security, because it’s not their problem, so how is it going to catch on in the US?”
As the dark clouds of thunderstorms stack above the skyscrapers of Wall Street, DB ambles toward the Museum of American Finance, only to find that it doesn’t open on Mondays. Lost in tortured thought about the mobile wallet and the competitive strategies of his clients, he reaches for his iPod, turning the corner of Broad Street to the sounds of “Brainbox Pollution” by the world’s greatest ever popular beat combo, the mighty Hawkwind.
Exit, pursued by bronze bull.
These opinions are my own (I think) and presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]
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