Christmas carol singers take contactless card donations

Earlier this week in Covent Garden, the London Community Gospel Choir performed traditional carols to an audience of festive shoppers, but instead of accepting cash and pennies for their singing they came equipped with a specially designed collection bucket.

The bucket used contactless technology and Christmas shoppers were given cards provided by Barclays and Barclaycard to give a donation by tapping their cards onto it instead of throwing pennies into it.

The contactless collection bucket helped raise money for children’s charity Help a Capital Child and it was also a way for Barclaycard to show just how easy it is to make contactless payments. If you’re buying something that’s £15 or less you don’t need to part with your card or your PIN number, you can just swipe it against a contactless payment terminal. The transaction will then use a secure network in order to add the purchase to your credit card bill, or if you’re using a debt card, take it from your current account. This kind of technology is being rolled out more and more, but you might not realise it’s actually in quite a few cafes and shops already.

Barclays and Barclaycard have been leading the way with the roll out of contactless technology over the past year, but we’vee seen interesting developments from the likes of Watch2pay, Starbucks and Google too.