Barclays customers will soon be able to pay their way with the wave of a card as the bank is set to be the first in the UK to roll-out contactless VISA debit cards to its customers. From March 2009, most Barclays debit cards that are issued or reissued will have contactless technology built in as standard. More than three million customers are expected to be using contacdess debit cards by the end of the year, the bank claims. The cards use contactless technology to enable transactions of ￡10 or less to be paid for by holding the card up to a special reader, without the need to enter a PIN or insert the card into a terminal. The transaction is debited directly from the customer's current account in the same way that a standard card transaction is. The cards will still have chip and PIN which will be used for purchases and for ATM transactions. To prevent excessive fraud (in case the card falls into the wrong hands) the card will occasionally prompt for the PIN to be entered to verify the customer's identity.
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