Bank to cut queues with RFID cards

Royal Bank of Scotland staff test low-value payment cards

The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) has this week started testing RFID-equipped payment cards to reduce queues in shops.

The bank is working with MasterCard to test the contactless card payment system at its Edinburgh headquarters.

A third of RBS’s 3,000 staff based at its Gogarburn campus have been issued with the cards, which allow them to pay for goods costing less than £10.

Microscopic antennas fitted into the cards will allow employees to pay for goods by pressing the Maestro card onto a reader, in the same way as passengers using the Oyster card on London’s public transport network.

Eight retail outlets, including Starbucks, Tesco, a canteen and a hairdresser’s are participating in the pilot and have had their till systems fitted with RFID reader pads.

‘For customers, it speeds up transactions and means they do not have to carry a pocket full of cash,’ said a spokesman for RBS. ‘For retailers, it saves time in terms of not having to count cash and then take it to the bank for processing.’

The cards will have the same functionality as other Maestro chip-and-PIN cards so staff can use them anywhere else in the country in the normal way.

While payments using the contactless wipe method do not require pilot participants to enter a PIN security number, the bank will carry out random checks during the trial.

The test will continue until the end of the year, and MasterCard is carrying out a number of other tests with other banks across the world.

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