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The contactless-payment partnership announced Monday by Barclaycard and Orange UK should produce a cobranded credit card within "the next couple months," a Barclaycard spokesperson tells CardLine Global. The card, designed to appeal to customers of the mobile operator, will carry MasterCard Worldwide's contactless PayPass application. Combined, Barclaycard and Orange have 28 million customers, and the two companies hope to convert many of those customers to contactless payments. Barclaycard and Orange plan to develop mobile-payments services, with the focus on Near Field Communication, a contactless technology being tested around the globe but likely still a year or two away from global rollouts. The United Kingdom-based credit card issuer independently has tested NFC payment, including one effort that involved prepaid cards, the spokesperson says. The spokesperson was unable to give specifics about the partnership's timetable for NFC rollouts, though it was unlikely any would happen for at least a year. The partnership's mobile-payments efforts could involve both MasterCard's PayPass and Visa's payWave contactless applications, the spokesperson says. Barclaycard has issued some 1.5 million contactless credit cards. Parent Barclays PLC, which recently announced plans to put contactless chips on debit cards, expects to issue 3 million such cards by 2010. The partnership represents another part of Barclay's aggressive push into contactless. Encouraging more consumers to use cards and mobile phones for contactless payments, especially low-value purchases at coffee shops, fast-food restaurants and newsstands, will require more merchants to install readers to accept the transactions. So far, UK merchants have installed about 10,000 contactless readers, Barclaycard says, with most in the London area. The issuer concentrates on working with retail chains to promote contactless payments. Retail chains can establish relatively efficient training programs for staff members, who must accept contactless payments, the spokesperson says. Such chains also enjoy a relatively robust flow of customers, who can promote contactless payments through word-of-mouth. The spokesperson is mum on what Barclaycard is doing to ensure more contactless readers are deployed, however, and declines to address whether the issuer subsidizes installations. "That's commercially sensitive," he says. Orange did not respond to requests for comment.
