Welcome Enhances Contactless Cards With Marketing Features

XLS-enabled contactless payment provides merchants with innovative promotional marketing features, while offering cardholders an intelligent contactless card that gives instant recognition and a hassle-free shopping experience. This is achieved through a single tap-and-pay process, with no loss of speed for the entire transaction.

Industry players have hoped that the benefits of contactless payments -- speed and convenience, primarily due to eliminating the need for a signature -- will be enough to spur the acceptance of electronic payment for small-value purchases (below US$25). But other Visa and MasterCard "No Signature Required" programs already offer the same benefits promised by contactless, using existing mag-stripe cards, so there is no need to replace cards and POS terminals. "Eliminating the need for a signature does not necessarily create the push for acquirers or merchants to modify their store operations in order to accept contactless payments," says Sébastien Guillaud, Group CEO for Welcome Real-time.

He went on to add, "Welcome sees that more is needed to create real benefits for merchants, for them to accept electronic payments for low-value transactions. Contactless can be made much more powerful and really stand out from magnetic stripe cards, if only the chip actually gets used. Merchants are very interested in solutions which help them increase their revenues and promote their products and services more effectively. With Welcome's patented technology, the contactless card's built-in microprocessor chip helps them achieve those objectives."

"Welcome believes that by tying retail marketing promotions to contactless payments, we are providing merchants with real and tangible benefits," says Wong Wan Ling, Product Marketing Director for Welcome Real-time. "Merchants will in turn encourage their customers to use contactless, and will actively steer small-ticket transactions from cash to bankcards. The merchant's ability to steer customers towards newer payment methods is something which has been neglected in our industry."