The prototype of Barclaycard’s latest contactless creation, the payment glove, is now being tested out in UK stores.
Just like their card equivalent, the gloves can be used to make payments of up to £20 and can be used at any of the 30,000 existing locations that accept contactless payments in the UK.
According to Barclaycard, they were created in response to a survey of Christmas shoppers, who named this as the item of clothing they would most like to see transformed into a means of payment.
Presumably, the idea is to speed up transactions by reducing the hassle of taking off gloves in order to dig cards out of purses and wallets. However, given how many of us have at some point dropped or mislaid a glove, however, there are some doubts over the security of contactless gloves as a payment method.
Mike Saunders, Managing Director of Digital Consumer Payments at Barclaycard, explained in a statement that the company “wanted to respond positively to shoppers’ demand” by taking “the stress out of Christmas shopping.”
He said: “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!”
Other accessories singled out as potential contactless payment devices in the Barclaycard survey were rings, scarves and – bafflingly – hats.
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