If you haven’t read this post about the Contactless Challenge I’m doing, please check it out first. It’s got some valuable data, including the task sheet.
I’m writing to you now, dear reader, about the first item on the task sheet. It reads thus:
| ‘Invest’ in a box of 12 Krispy Kreme doughnuts with which to curry favour with your colleagues. | Victoria Station, Waterloo Station, High Holborn, Euston (The Piazza) |
Now I am loving the term “invest”.
This is one of the challenges I’ve been set by the Gemalto team. They have, I presume, been reliably informed by one of their partners, Visa or Barclaycard, or both, that Krispy Kreme has installed Contactless payments functionality at the listed stores.
I’ve got some news in that regard. On the way back from Friday night’s 361 Live event (it was a brilliant night, by the way) I popped over to the Krispy Kreme concession next to Platform 19 at Waterloo.
I studied their payments machine carefully.
I saw no PayWave logo. Indeed the machine looked positively shit. If the card terminal was a car, it would have been a clapped out Ford Escort.
Significantly unimpressed, I thought I should ask the person behind the counter if they did ‘contactless’.
“You what?” came the reply.
“Er,” I replied, collecting my thoughts, “Can I pay via Visa PayWave?”
The lady stared at me for a moment, parsing my statement.
After a second, I brought out my Barclaycard and pointed at the PayWave logo, “Er, you know, can I swipe?”
She got the message a few seconds later then shook her head.
Riiight.
I took a picture of the machine. You’ll no doubt recognise the make. It’s one of those ageing VeriFone models.
I did think that perhaps it might have contactless capability and the serving team weren’t sufficiently briefed but I didn’t see “contactless” or any other branding on the machine.
You’d THINK that a place like Krispy Kreme would have JUMPED on contactless, wouldn’t you? Indeed over the past few weeks I have been carefully examining the payment capabilities of many of my regular haunts and I’ve been astonished at how dated their payments infrastructure is. Whenever anyone pays via credit card at anywhere that’s aiming for high traffic transactions, tying up the cash register for around 30 seconds per credit card transaction simply isn’t an option. Or, it shouldn’t be an option.
So what do you think? Does the fact I made it to a nominated Krispy Kreme and tried to do a contactless payment qualify, somehow, for the challenge?
No.
Well, we hadn’t started, had we?
Maybe it’s worth 1 point out 10? At least we can cross Waterloo off the list of Krispy Kreme locations that handle contactless transactions.
What say you, reader?
