How safe are Pick n Pay’s tap & go payments?

Pick n Pay stores nationwide are now offering a contactless ‘tap & go’ payment method for purchases under R200. According to the store, this will reduce queues at the tills.

Richard van Rensburg, deputy CEO Pick n Pay, explained that the limit of R200 is set by the banks and not Pick n Pay. “It exists to protect customers in the event that they lose their card and it has not yet been blocked. This limit will be increased to R500 in January.”

But how safe is this payment method?

The issue of safety and the protection of your information is a concern. However, van Rensburg noted that there are a number of steps in place to ensure the safety of the customer’s information. He explained:

1. There is a card limit of R200. This will increase to R500 in the New Year.
2. On a random basis (every few transactions) the system will ask for PIN authentication even though the transaction is contactless.
3. The transaction is still authorised in real time with the customer’s bank. It is only the PIN authentication that is omitted.
4. Pick n Pay has implemented NFC (near field communication) technology to read the customer’s card avoiding the requirement to insert the card into a chip card reader. This technology complies with the highest security standards issued by the card industry.
5. Only cards that are activated by a customer’s bank will work.
6. Pick n Pay’s systems were audited by independent third parties appointed by our bank to ensure the system is secure and that cardholder information is safe. This audit certificate was required by both Visa and MasterCard international.
7. Pick n Pay has implemented an additional protection for customers requiring a customer to verify the amount by pressing the touch screen on our card reader device after tapping their card.

Saving you time

One of the bonuses of this payment method is that it will reportedly save you time. But with a limit of only R200 (soon to be R500), there can be speculation as to whether there will really be much time saved.

However, van Rensburg stated that the cumulative queue saving time for customers is huge and a major reason why Pick n Pay implemented this technology. “More than 65% of all card transactions at Pick n Pay are below R200 so the majority of transactions will be eligible for contactless transactions. This will be further extended when the limit is increased to R500.”

He added: “The time taken at a till can be divided into three buckets (scan time, idle time, payment time). Payment time takes about a third of total time at the till for the average POS (point of sale) transaction. A contactless payment, as we have implemented it in Pick n Pay, reduces payment time by about half.  Simply put, a contactless payment reduces payment time by about 10 seconds. If half the transactions that were eligible for contactless payments became contactless, this would mean that we would save our customers a cumulative total of 25 000 hours per month in POS queue time.”

Tellers have been trained in the new payment method, and Pick n Pay is installing signs at all till points next week to inform customers of the new payment service.

New developments

There are a number of other developments that have taken place over the past year, with more set to be carried out next year. Van Rensburg explained: “Recently we upgraded our Smart Shopper app to enable customers to automatically store a history of their purchases on the app and to create a suggested shopping list from this history.

“This will create the ability in future for a customer to opt not to have a printed till slip, further reducing the payment process at POS. During next year we will introduce the ability to make card less payments in store, meaning customers will no longer need to carry their wallet when shopping. In fact as of today, we have already enabled FNB customers who use the FNB banking app on an android phone to make cardless payments using their mobile phone and our contactless payment system.”

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