Today, MasterCard and the Rugby World Cup 2011 officially launched MasterCard’s PayPass system at Auckland’s Eden Park, following a trial of the system at the World Cup venue.
PayPass is a contactless payment method that involves an embedded chip and antenna in MasterCard pre-paid, credit and debit cards.
The system was trialed during several recent fixtures at Eden Park and was successful, Eden Park general manager of sales and marketing Tracy Morgan said at today’s launch.
“One of our challenges was around payment options and PayPass doesn’t just speed up payments, it also lets food and beverage staff not deal with cash so much.”
A PayPass transaction saves approximately 30 seconds on average on PIN number- and sign-off –based transactions, MasterCard New Zealand country manager Albert Naffah said, “and that amounts to hours of queuing” if you add up the time it takes for thousands of spectators to make payments, he said.
The PayPass system at Eden Park is limited to purchases of up to NZ$80.
Meanwhile, Greenstone Energy, the owner the BP and Shell petrol station chains in New Zealand, is looking at a similar system for petrol payments, and Visa is also planning a contactless payment offering. The ANZ bank launched a "tap and go" credit card earlier this month.