178 Pret A Manger shops across UK to go contactless

Barclaycard and Commidea Ltd have announced that Pret A Manger, the high-street food chain, is the latest retailer to offer contactless payment facilities to its customers.

The launch of the integrated system follows a successful pilot in seven Pret A Manger shops across London, and will be rolled out to the remaining 171 UK Pret stores over the next six months, to become one of the largest contactless integrations undertaken by a retailer.

The phased rollout, which will complete in April 2009, will see contactless introduced to Pret stores in a range of towns and cities across the UK including London, Manchester, York, Brighton, Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge and Southampton. These stores join Barclaycard's ever-expanding contactless network, with more than 6,000 outlets accepting contactless payments throughout the UK.

The contactless solution developed by Commidea, the leading card payment processing solution provider, will dramatically reduce queuing times for consumers. Pret A Manger follows several well-known high-street names such as Coffee Republic, EAT, and Yo! Sushi that have signed up to contactless in a drive to provide customers with a fast, simple and secure method of paying.

"We are delighted that Pret A Manger has decided to integrate contactless payment with our existing Chip and PIN solution," said Giles Cooper, Head of Sales and Marketing at Commidea. "Retailers need to find as many ways as possible to make their stores more appealing to consumers. Convenience and fast-moving queues through the use of contactless are one such way of doing this."

Contactless payments allow customers to purchase items of £10 and under without the need to enter their PIN or sign or wait long periods at the point of sale. The customer is simply required to wave their contactless card in front of the Barclaycard terminal, making the system quick and effective.

In the last three months, Barclaycard has enabled contactless to become much more accessible to consumers by adding the technology to more of its card products. All newly issued Barclaycard Platinum cards now include contactless technology and over one million contactless cards have already been issued. These one million cards include Barclaycard OnePulse, the three-in-one Oyster, contactless and Chip and PIN card, and the cards recently issued to Goldfish and Morgan Stanley customers.

Paul Cook, Managing Director of Payment Acceptance at Barclaycard comments: "It is great that Pret A Manger has committed to contactless in such a big way. Not only does it demonstrate its commitment to the technology, it also highlights the fact that contactless really is becoming a reality in cities and towns everywhere in Britain, not just London. Barclaycard is a leader in contactless and we now have more than one million contactless cards in issue. The continued increase in demand, by both retailers and consumers, is a testament to the strength of the technology and the convenience and efficiency it provides."

Simon Hargraves, Director of Food and Communications at Pret A Manger comments: "At Pret, we pride ourselves on amazing food, passionate people and incredible customer service. Speed is incredibly important to us and by working with Barclaycard and Commidea we're able to install an efficient contactless system to give our customers a quicker method of payment and an improved customer experience. The new system has been received well so far and we have committed to rolling out contactless across our entire network of UK shops during 2009".