Coles ditches PINs in payment pilot
Summary: Coles is currently conducting a pilot to speed up card payments in over 100 of its various retail stores by removing the need for a PIN or signature for payments under $35.
Coles is currently conducting a pilot to speed up card payments in over 100 of its various retail stores by removing the need for a PIN or signature for payments under $35.
(Checkout image by Nate Grigg, CC2.0)
The "Fast Pay" pilot program includes 118 stores across the Coles Supermarkets, K-Mart, Target and Officeworks brands. Under the trial, Coles has simply tweaked the protocols of its payment systems, allowing customers with magnetic stripe cards and chip cards to swipe or insert the card to pay, without verification, for payments under $35. It is not the same as the contactless card system that Woolworths plans to roll out, which Coles' terminals don't support.
Douglas Swansson, head of Payment Services, Finance for Coles, told ZDNet Australia today that the trial doesn't put customer security at risk.
"From our perspective, it doesn't impose additional security concerns over what's out there today. The security is no different than the security we have in place," Swansson said.
The payment head added that any losses resulting from fraudulent transactions is usually covered under Visa, MasterCard and American Express' no liability fraud coverage, meaning that losses incurred by fraudulent payments will be reimbursed.
"Card suppliers are confident it won't create a whole lot of unauthorised transactions," Swansson said, adding that no new payment hardware was installed to handle the trial.
"We're keen to understand how customers react to the service ... we've had quite a lot of positive feedback," Swansson added.
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Talkback
Personally, i'm not sure why thye don't just roll out paywave. It works a hell of a lot quicker than even pin-less eftpos.
We used that image from Flickr as it represented a for our story checkout. It's not meant to represent a Coles checkout.
Sorry if there was any confusion.
Cheers,
Luke Hopewell
Since when do retailers get to decide to remove customer security features? Are they going to be liable for any losses incurred on my card?
I can envisage scenarios where someone steals a credit card and then spends the entire day making sub-$35 purchases. If you're in a situation where you struggle to buy the basics then it's a rather tempting survival technique.
I wonder if it'll apply to alcohol purchases, in which case expect muggings to increase...
The issue of supermarket check out speeds has never been about EFTPOS, it's more to do with not having enough check out aisles operating (as suggested above - despite wherever the stock photo came from). A simple trip to a supermarket will prove this point, you'll be lucky to find half the checkouts active.
The other issue I can see is that I do not believe banks are in a position to capture multiple attempts at spending ~$35 during a single day. Banking fraud detection usually triggers for large or suspicious activities but I wouldn't be surprised if increased patterns of small spending today would triggers such a halt on a card.
Wonder who heads Coles' IT...won't be long before he/she gets some flak is my guess.