11 March 2009
Customers of Barclays are soon to receive VISA debit cards, complete with contactless technology.
It will be the first UK bank to use the new technology, which will be issued as standard for most new and replacement debit cards.
"Up to three million customers are expected to be using contactless debit cards by the end of the year and the majority of Barclays debit card customers will have contactless cards by 2011," the bank states.
The cards work by holding it up to a special reader, a feature which can be used on transactions of £10 of less.
It will eradicate the need for chip and PIN transaction and ATM withdrawals, Barclays adds.
The latest figures from Apacs, the UK payments association, show 75 million debit cards were issued in the UK last year, with a total of 42.1 million holders throughout the country.
It also calculates that 2.9 billion cash withdrawals were made last year.
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