Move over, Apple Pay: Tesco trials PayQwiq phone-flash pay app Supermarket, virtual mobile network and bank that is very bad at accounting Tesco has new way for you to pay for your box of Celebrations: a digital wallet called PayQwiq. The service, which uses QR codes, is being trialled in Farringdon, the nearest branch to Vulture Central and 15 other Express stores in London as well as …
I always use cash at those 'you do all the hard work, we pick up the profit' tills. They're great for getting rid of a pound or two in loose copper.
Yes it is me causing the long queue of people waiting to pay. The supermarkets have changed the coin input from a hopper to a slot. It now takes ages putting the pennies in one at a time.
At Little Waitrose at Kings Cross stations the coin hopper is a conveyer belt contraption that your coins need to be flat on so that they disappear through the slot. I have discovered a flaw though - round coin, props on side wall and happily spins for eternity. I was confused why I was a penny short when I had put the exact change in to find the penny spinning away happy as Larry.
Also the coin conveyer belt is on top so vertically challenged people will not have a clue that their pound coin is trying the coin rolling endurance record.
Since it is a very early trial with only a few staff at this stage all the odium appears somewhat misplaced. If the users find an issue then it can be addressed before anything goes further or is that not the idea of a restricted test phase? I used to try to get the accounts staff using any new method or service since they knew absolutely nothing about what was going on and could be guaranteed to find the problems in far less time than anyone else, what is more they would then ask questions and not try to fix things themselves.
In my day with in house trial it was often the practice to try aspects that were not thought likely to fly well to encourage people to come back with their ideas for improvements.
Since cashless wave and pay is going so well in its present forms in shops everywhere I have no doubt that this will not be needed, Oh hang on has anyone shown any desire to use wave and pay?
Don't all rush there must be at least one person somewhere.
True London's transport is making use of this style of technology but I doubt that is the last word on the subject either.
[I disabled it on my credit card since I never go near the system and would only ever travel as a member of a party so it would be doubly useless.}
"Since it is a very early trial with only a few staff at this stage all the odium appears somewhat misplaced. "
I don't think so if the report is accurate. The whole point of bonk-to-pay NFC was speed and convenience. What's described in the article is a hideously convoluted faff that seems to start from the premise that NFC has never been invented (despite compatible chips in the majority of phones shipped in the past few years). An NFC chip should still work even if the phone has too flat a battery to start, but this requires the phone up and running, an app, a mobile wallet system, possibly a mobile data connection, then the generation of a QR, optical recognition and decoding by the till and then two way interraction between till and device (to update the mobile wallet).
It's difficult to see how that's going to be sorted out. I wouldn't want a Tesco-managed wallet, in fact I don't want any digital wallet (a la Google). I don't want QR codes, and I'd expect my mobile banking app to keep me informed without being required for the transaction. All that should be needed is to register my NFC equipped phone to a Visa or Mastercard account, and for me to wave it at the NFC receptor. Those who don't want NFC needn't partake, but I hate small change, and would be delighted to see it gone forever.
So go out and buy a £500 apple phone to pay for groceries, now that's a great idea, - not.
Cash really would be a better move than that!
Hang on I can already pay at the tills with a choice of methods so the apple way is just another extra. Thank goodness there is no compulsion for any of these new 'ideas'.
". When you select your payment option, you can now choose PayQwiq and run the app, sign in with a PIN and choose which card you want to pay with. This produces a QR code on the screen of your phone – you wave this at the machine to pay."
Whats the point? the whole process takes longer than paying with a debit/credit card. Waiting for people to count through change is bad enough (but understandable in these hard times) last thing I want is to be waiting for someone whilst they are playing with their mobile.
Still my Tesco's don't even have contact-less payment option yet :(.
you could just pay with the credit card you linked to the app, without having to pre-register the card and faff around with apps and QR codes etc. - PaySlo sounds like a better name..
Someone at Tesco is rather missing the point about quick and easy payment. I wonder what else they're getting wrong?
One of these emporia that I visit from time to time have been 're-moddeled'. Now the first thing to see as you walk through the door in the clothing Section and the range of women's underwear (Bras) in particular. At 06:20 in the morning, this is a real turn off.Next to that are the aisles of Nappies and the Pharmacy. Boys toys are relegated to the back of the store.
I guess they have decided they they want to appeal only to women from now on. I find this strange because the majority of locals are of South Asian origin (southall) and they are generally very private about shopping for unmentionables.
One cannot wonder if Testo has really lost the plot.
Most stores do arrange to appeal to Women...
Princes Street M&S, in order to buy Men's socks you have to go in the main doors, through womens blouses, skirts and shirts, down a wee escalator, through Women's Trousers, take an escalator up, walk through the entire Lingerie department, take another escalator up, walk through luggage, Suits, Trousers, Shirts, Jeans, and finally, at the furthest point from the doors, socks and undies. Oddly, I've stopped buying M&S smalls.
What's really annoying is that the escalators can run head to tail, and would allow you to avoid the disapproving looks of the Morningside Ladies as you shuffle nervously through the bras and panties, and get your shopping more conveniently, but management have decreed that thou shalt want to impulse buy a brassiere for your beloved - or even your wife. Or possibly yourself. Each to their own.
Store layout folk really, really want to stop trying pop-psych, and work out the layout which will let folk do their shopping most efficiently.
As for Tescos trying out a new payment method, given their recent headlines I think they need to get their internal accounting and strategy sorted before spaffing their money on a ludicrously involved method of paying for a pint of milk.
Makes me glad I get most of my food from a street market in Edinburgh - cash only, money straight to the farmers, and most surprisingly, not that much more expensive than going to a supermarket.
Clothes I get from whichever shop has the best sale on.
Perhaps you could enter the store from Rose St? The layout of that store is dictated by the building itself and not something that M&S can change easily due to the age of the building***. My local M&S has the Mens clothes at one end next to an entrance and the womens at the other end, again next to an entrance. Ironically, there is a huge Tesco Extra (Blackwater) next door that is constantly moving stuff sround. Even the staff don't know where things are these days.
*** my ex Father in law used to work there.
"Store layout folk really, really want to stop trying pop-psych, and work out the layout which will let folk do their shopping most efficiently."
And by "efficiently".. You mean for you?
Aww.. So cute.. So innocent..
No.. I'm afraid store layout folk really really really don't want to stop trying to pop-psyche you. Because it works very well.
This is efficient. Just not for you.
The self service machines have enough trouble scanning barcodes in the clubcard app - or responding in a timely fashion to an item being scanned. The "Activity" light which I assume to the be HDD light is flashing away like a disco light at a rave, and often when it speaks the sound is choppy.
The Tesco self service machines also behave like tech support on the phone - they don't like you jumping ahead when you already know what it is you want to do. For instance, my Tesco won't let me enter my PIN number in until it has told me to, but it's still spieling out the ways I can pay - while I have already selected to pay by card, and been told to put my card into the machine (on screen) and the little light on the card reader has turned on, I have already said I don't want cashback - but the voice hasn't even reached the part where it says "sssselecccct ccccaasshhhbaaack amounnnnnnt"
ASDA used to be the same but they upgraded their machines recently - and the voice actually gets stopped if it is still speaking at each step. So my checkout process goes something like "beep, beep, beep, unexpect.... beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, blah blah blah notes are dispensed below the scanner, please insert you..... select cashback am..... please enter y..... Thank you, please take your shopping.....<10 seconds later> Please take your shopping"
Walk in, get stuff, hand over cash, get change, get out.
Incidentally, has anyone else spotted that Sainsbury's new self-serve machines are slower than the old models. Have to touch screen to pay and then it sits there and thinks before spitting out change.
Old machines realised you'd finished when you stuck in money.
At least the new machines calculate any two-fer-one type discounts before calculating total. Old machines would display full price total, only deducting discount once you'd paid. Always wondered what would happen if you only had the correct money.
"Based on these comments, nobody likes Apple Pay either? Google Wallet? I am genuinely interested - are we not keen on digital wallets?"
The idea of the digital wallet seems superfluous to me. Might work for others, but I avoid having a wallet full of cards in the first place, so I'd only ever want to associate an NFC device with one account, so that NFC should be just an extension of my debit card used for low value transactions.
And why would anybody risk all of their financial details in one place with big IT (or MNO, or retailers) companies not known for their consumer-focus or privacy policies?
I've got an idea for a new kind of payment method. You only need to carry around a small plastic card - hopefully wallet makers will make wallets with special pockets to carry them. The cards are cheap to produce and can be given to customers for free They're small and flat, and a little bit flexible so they're easy to carry and pocket. They're waterproof and don't require charging or batteries. They've got great security features - they're worth nothing in themselves, and quickly be cancelled if they're lost. You can put a chip in them so they'll do NFC just like a phone. As they'll have your name on them, you could even use them for non-photo ID. You don't need to faff around with an app any more - you can quickly whip one of these out and pay for anything.
I think I'm going to be a billionaire.
There is little I want less than contactless payment systems. If my bank send me a contactless card I will cut it up and send them back to them, if they don't catch on I'll switch bank, if no banks will offer non contactless I'll stop using debit cards and go back to depositing my pay in cash and doing counter withdrawals.
For months, TFL have been banging on about "card clash" and ensuring that we don't keep our oyster card near our credit cards - why would I want a system that means I need to have two wallets and with the added fun of easily being charged twice, it is just moronic.
What is the "friction of paying for things"? The only difference between contactless and chip+PIN is that you push the card in to a reader and tap in a PIN - how much friction can happen in 3 seconds?
Indeed - their soulless, giant warehouse stores, prices higher than immediate competitors (web comparisons), lower quality produce (my perception), and crappy customer service (my experience on several occasions) have caused me to never set foot in the nearest 'extra' store. We now do big shops via delivery (from their competitors) or go further out of our way to the more pleasant experiences of Sainsbury or Waitrose.
Our local small 'grocery' store is a Tesco Local, which we do use for occasional top-ups, but it does seem crazy that one of the few places I might want and be able to use a card to pay for something under £20 with a slappy-tappy card doesn't have the requisite tech installed.
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