Barclaycard trials gloves that let wearers pay contactlessly for their Christmas shopping
Barclaycard has trialled “contactless payment gloves, allowing people to pay contactlessly for their Christmas shopping.
In a survey by Barclaycard, which quizzed 2,000 people on their Christmas shopping behaviour, “gloves you could pay with” were voted the most popular wearable item consumers would like to see created, followed by rings in second place and bracelets in third.
It was suggested that this would allow people to be able to pay, even when their hands are full will shopping bags, removing the need to rummage around for a purse or wallet. One in five shoppers (19 per cent) surveyed said they struggle to pay when their hands are full of bags.
Mike Saunders, managing director of digital consumer payments at Barclaycard, said: “At some point most of us have experienced the stress of holding bags full of shopping while trying to find a spare hand to get our card out of our purse or wallet to pay. Some may have even been subjected to frustration from those piling up in the queue behind them! So when people told us that being able to pay with gloves would take some of the stress out of their Christmas shopping, we wanted to respond positively to shoppers’ demand.
“The ‘pay gloves’ we’re trialling are designed to let shoppers ‘tap, pay and go’ even when their hands are full of shopping. If the prototype is popular, these handy winter warmers could be bringing some festive cheer to bag-laden shoppers by Christmas 2015.”
The gloves, which are touchscreen enabled to allow consumers to use their mobile while shopping, are embedded with a bPay contactless chip that can be linked to a credit or debit card and used to pay for transactions of up to £20.