MasterCard recently announced that it will launch, by the end of 2007, the first MasterCard® PayPass™ pilot programme in Italy, in partnership with Poste Italiano, a Banco Posta unit. Before the end of the year, new cardholders will be offered, for a six to eight month period, a prepaid card: the MasterCard PostePay Evolution. This card will enable cardholders to pay for their purchases costing less than 25 euros in a large number of retail outlets in Milan and Rome, as well as in cinemas, fast food chains and supermarkets. To pay for their purchases at merchants participating in the pilot scheme, all cardholders have to do is wave their card over a PayPass reader. This Tap & Go™ technology developed by MasterCard in numerous European markets offers cardholders a secure and simple way of paying for low value purchases without needing to have the exact change, enter a code or sign a receipt. However, for larger value purchases a PIN code or a signature may be required.

Barclaycard, Barclays’ specialised card subsidiary, is to launch its new OnePulse card in September 2007. The three-in-one card combines a standard chip and PIN payment system, Transport for London’s contactless Oyster card function and Visa’s ‘wave and pay’ technology for low value payments (less than ten pounds). OnePulse will be accepted in more than a thousand retail outlets across London, with which Barclaycard has signed agreements. The retail outlets will include coffee shops, restaurants, newsagents and even museums: Coffee Republic, Threshers, Books Etc, YO!Sushi, Eat, Krispy Kreme, the Science Museum, etc. At the end of 2006, Barclays also signed an exclusivity agreement with TranSys, the company that manages the Oyster card for Transport for London, under which it has the right to integrate Oyster in its debit and credit cards for the next three years.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is breaking new ground in the United Kingdom, with an electronic payment system, which allows users to pay simply by waving their debit card against a reader, instead of entering a PIN number of signing a receipt. In partnership with MasterCard, RBS has been testing this “pay by touch” debit card at its premises in Edinburgh, before offering if to its customers. The system is available for transactions up to ten pounds (15 euros) and it takes less than a second to validate a transaction. The system provides for random security checks where users will be asked to enter their PIN number to confirm their identity. This experiment, which was launched in June in the RBS canteen, two Starbuck coffee shops and a baker’s, has resulted in a significant drop in cash transactions, which have been halved. The card has already attracted 1 200 of the bank’s 3 000 head office employees. Other formats are possible such as watches or mobile phones. Low-value payments represent a potential market of 40 billion euros in the United Kingdom, in particular in pubs and petrol stations.