Making EFT-POS work

Abstract

Following the perspectives provided by my colleagues from the USA and France, I would now like to add an English dimension to the jigsaw that makes up the current EFT-POS debate. For this I will draw on the experience of our own fledgling EFT-POS service, which we at Lloyds have branded ‘Cardpoint’. Whilst pricing is a specific issue to be addressed, to use a medical analogy, I would regard pricing as the symptom of the ‘condition’ called EFT-POS, rather like a pain in the leg is a symptom of having pulled a muscle. And, of course, every symptom has an underlying cause. In this case the cause lies in the commercial relationship of bank, retailer and consumer, and this will be my focus this afternoon. But first, some general perspectives.