Marks & Spencer, one of the UK’s largest retailers, announced today it had rolled out contactless payment to 644 of its UK stores and said 14% of its card transactions under £20 (US$30.97) are contactless.
The merchant, which sells clothing, food and home products, among other merchandise, said it now is the “leading contactless retailer” in the UK, handling more than 230,000 contactless transactions per week, or nearly 1 million per month, citing transaction data provided by Visa Europe.
In a statement, Marks & Spencer’s retail director Sacha Berendji said that contactless increases convenience for consumers, since transactions take less than a second. She indicated in the statement that the merchant also expected customers to adopt mobile payment, which would refer to, or at least include, NFC.
“Contactless and mobile payment is set to be an exciting part of the future retail landscape,” Berendji said in the statement, adding that “customers are already embracing” the benefits of contactless.
Marks & Spencer began its rollout of contactless point-of-sale terminals after a trial last summer in 25 London stores. It has a total of more than 700 stores.
The merchant said its London stores have the highest levels of contactless transactions, and pointed to one store in particular, Marks & Spencer Finsbury Pavement, in which it said one in three card transactions under £20 are by contactless bank cards. Store manager Richard Cooke said in a statement that contactless helps reduce wait times during the lunchtime rush. Consumers can make payments of up to £20 without entering a PIN code.
Marks & Spencer also said use of contactless is increasing in its stores in other UK cities, including Manchester, Croydon and Reading.
All told, the UK now has more than 200,000 contactless point-of-sale terminals. Many if not most are probably still bank-owned or bank procured terminals in smaller merchant outlets. But a growing number of tier-one merchants are adopting contactless, including McDonald’s, Starbucks, retail pharmacy Boots and the UK Post Office. The latter has more than 11,000 branches.
In addition, Transport for London accepts contactless credit and debit cards on more than 8,500 buses and plans to expand that to the London Underground and other transit gates this year.
No. 1 UK retailer Tesco has been trialing contactless acceptance, and despite recent reports saying it has rejected mobile NFC, last fall Frans Falize, international director for Dotcom at Tesco, said the giant retailer is taking a wait-and-see approach to both contactless and NFC. He added that the merchant was not bullish on QR codes for payment.
Marks & Spencer, which made its announcement today with cooperation from Visa Europe, noted there are 26.4 million Visa payWave cards on issue in the UK, in addition to the 200,000 contactless acceptance points in the country.
All or nearly all of these contactless POS terminals also accept MasterCard PayPass and some would accept ExpressPay from American Express, which has also been issuing contactless cards in the UK, according to the UK Cards Association. The association said there were a total of 31 million contactless cards on issue in the UK at the end of 2012, of all brands. Most are probably Visa payWave cards.
Visa Europe said in February that contactless bank card transactions in the UK had hit 2.5 million per month and expected a fourfold increase in 2013. That projection might be out of date.
According to Visa, there are more than 750,000 contactless POS terminals in Europe. The UK has the largest infrastructure of active terminals. Among other contactless hotspots in Europe is Poland, which had 110,000 contactless terminals as of this spring and an even higher rate of transactions than in the UK.