ABA Banking Journal - November 2007 - (Page 42B)

REPORTER’S NOTES rich. On the other hand, after a while you feel as if you are dragging around money bags. So alternatives to cash become appealing. Many public phones on the streets of London accept phone cards as well as coins. And only days before our arrival, an interesting plastic payment alternative had been unveiled: the Barclaycard OnePulse. OnePulse combines three payment mechanisms in a single card. One is London Transport’s Oyster stored-value card, which provides savings of 50% or more on bus and “underground” service for registered users’ advanced purchase. The Oyster system, among other things, reviews the rider’s usage for the each day and recalculates charges to provide the best pricing based on actual travel, as the London transit system provides various levels of pricing based on time of day, bulk purchase, and distance covered. The new Barclay product also allows holders to make small purchases using the OneTouch “wave and pay” technology installed at various merchants. Users can transact purchases of up to £10 at each location through Barclay’s OneTouch system, which uses Visa’s “wave and pay” technology. For larger transactions, and charges made at merchants not accepting OneTouch, the OnePulse card also offers a standard credit card function. Plastic, both debit and credit, seemed to be accepted as commonly, or moreso, than in the U.S. In pubs, restaurants, and even a tea room, it was common for waitstaff or checkers to plug cards into wireless readers that contained keyboards for convenient input of PINs. We had charged the purchases, but what we’d really wanted to try was Waitrose’s QuickCheck scanners (pictured). Only registered Waitrose cardholders could use them, however. These interesting “scan as you shop” gadgets could be borrowed from a display in the store, and, when not in use, fit into a socket in the shopping cart. As the shopper selects goods, they scan them into the portable device. At the checkout, the shopper hands the device to the checker, who downloads the list of purchases and the grand total from it. The shopper can pay in cash or have the purchase applied to their store card or other designated payment account. The system, which also allows you to bag as you go, comes from Motorola’s Symbol Technologies. Contacts to Waitrose once we’d returned weren’t successful, but U.K. press accounts indicate that this system— and one offered by competitors—combat potential theft through spot checks. Another competitor handles this at selfservice checkout kiosks by computing the anticipated weight of the scanned goods and comparing it to the weight of the goods being taken away. Money in Marlborough “Can I pay by credit card?” Ellen asked the matronly clerk seated, rather than standing, at the high-tech checkout station. “Why uv course, luv,” she said with a smile, scanning our purchases. On the “high street” of the village of Marlborough, in Wiltshire, we’d been doing a bit of shopping at a Waitrose supermarket—Ellen had bought some British candy for our daughters and ginger snaps for me, and I’d bought ginger beer and a pint each of Theakston’s Old Peculier and Morland’s Old Speckled Hen, British ales with names I couldn’t pass up. 42b NOVEMBER 2007/ABA BANKING JOURNAL One final shot at the internet We drove our way across southern England from London to Land’s End and back using plastic for gas, which seemed cheap until we remembered we were spending pounds and buying by the liter. On the way back to London, after an illfated attempt to add Portsmouth to our sightseeing agenda, we’d shot north, through dark English country roads and roundabouts, and rolled into suburban London, near Gatwick Airport, to return our rental car just by our 11 p.m. deadline, and duck into an airport Holiday Inn before the next day’s noontime flight home. After bringing the car back—an adventure in do-it-yourself in itself—we popped into the airport’s northern terminal to try to do advance check-in on an airport terminal. Signs and simple obser- vation confirmed two unhappy facts. One, all of Continental’s terminals were hooded for the night. And, two, airport security rules made it clear that my bottles of Old Peculier and Old Speckled Hen could not be packed in our carryons, as their size violated onboard liquid restrictions. Having given up on a conventional dinner by this point, we hit an all-night Marks & Spencer food shop, and walked back to the hotel. There, we found the same company’s inlobby internet terminal, this time, obligingly, with a card reader alternative to buying cards from a busy front desk. We went through all the usual steps to online check-in, but then, once again, we hit a wall. The attached printer wouldn’t work. As dedicated do-it-yourselfers, we checked all the connections, checked the paper supply, all that good stuff, but still no luck. I guarded the machine, with all of our personal particulars on it, while Ellen went to the front desk. She returned, with the news that the staff knew the printer was kaput, and would let us use their own terminal behind the desk. I’d always wondered what was in those mysterious rooms that hotel clerks disappear into. Once we’d completed check in, the desk clerk apologized again for the trouble, explaining that it had been a very busy night. And how! Ellen noted that while she’d been waiting in line, the entire desk staff had been dealing with a boisterous would-be guest who arrived without a reservation and kept trying to check-in himself and a female companion with nothing but a debit card—“Maybe even a gift card,” Ellen said—and no other identification. Holiday Inn wasn’t quite that ready for the do-it-yourself payments age. Back in the room, we liquidated our investments. That is, we drank my unpackable ale. I polished off the Old Speckled Hen, leaving Ellen stuck with Old Peculier, in more ways than one. BJ www.ababj.com/subscribe.html http://www.ababj.com/subscribe.html

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of ABA Banking Journal - November 2007

ABA Banking Journal - November 2007 Contents Editor’s Column Briefing: Good News for Mortgages Sleight of Mind N.Y. Hiring Bonanza May Be Bane Snapshot: A Look at Held-For-Investment Loan Growth ABA Resources ABA Chairman’s Position “The Moose Bank” Thrives on Manufactured Housing Loans Finding the Middle Way for Your Bank’s Retirement Program Pass the Aspirin Cover Story: Self-Service Steps Up DIY U.K. Style Marketing to Millennials Getting Real With “Gen Wired” Ethnic Marketing: Disinterested Banking Getting Good at Global Sourcing Case in Point Turn Compliance on It's Head Banker’s Mart To Advertise/Index of Advertisers The Economy

ABA Banking Journal - November 2007

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