Woolworths goes contactless for all brands

Woolworths said today that it intends to roll out contactless card payment terminals across all of its brands using Visa's payWave technology.

(Credit: Woolworth image by erostrend, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The supermarket has issued a request for proposals for the replacement of over 30,000 "integrated state-of-the-art PIN pads". The roll-out of the new contactless-enabled terminals will start before the end of the calendar year.

The upgrade will allow customers with contactless cards to pay for purchases without entering a PIN code as long as the purchase is under $100.

Woolworths' supermarkets will be the first to receive the upgrade, but the order of the other brands has not yet been finalised. The company has also stated that it has not yet settled on a completion date.

"We know how much our customers love to embrace new technologies and services that help make their life a little bit easier," Dhun Karai, head of Group Financial Services at Woolworths said in a statement. "They have well and truly adapted to self-service checkouts and other in-store innovations and we hope contactless payment will be just as popular."

Contactless card roll-outs have been taking off in Australia, with outlets such as Bunnings already on the bandwagon. Visa has also been trialling near-field communication payments via mobile phone, which could see the customer pay in the same way but using an app on their phone that communicates with the terminal via a Near Field Communications chip.