Little Chef serves up contactless payments at 173 outlets

Roadside diners get to wave and pay for their Olympic Breakfasts

Little Chef is rolling out contactless card technology across all 173 of its restaurants to get diners back on the road faster.

The roadside restaurant chain said its use of contactless payments will allow customers to pay for their meals more quickly. The technology will also be rolled out to its Coffee Tempo and Burger King outlets.

The contactless payment system will allow customers to make payments up to the value of £15, without needing to enter a PIN or enter the card into a terminal. Instead, the shopper swipes their card over a reader incorporated into the till system to make a payment.

Little Chef is installing contactless payment technology across its outlets
(Photo credit: Frenkieb via Flickr under the following Creative Commons Licence)

NFC (near field communications) is touted as a way to speed up transaction times and cut queues at till points by cutting out the need for shoppers to find change or enter their PIN numbers. Recently the Co-operative Group announced it planned to roll out contactless payments to its food stores starting from next year.

Little Chef interim managing director, Tracey Mulligan, said in a statement: "Technology plays a big part in improving the customer experience and making our offer relevant to today's busy traveller. We believe that contactless is an important part of the future of payments and are committed to embracing it in its early stages".

Barclays, which is providing the payment technology, said it has issued more than 25,000 contactless terminals since September 2007.