No change?

Banks and credit card companies have come up with yet another brilliant idea to part us from our hard-earned.




Realising that they aren't allowed to charge illegal late payment penalties (or at least, get away with it), they're now looking at other ways of getting us to use our cards more and thus, making up for the shortfall.

And here is their latest idea, Touch & Pay.

The idea is pretty simple. If you're one of these people that buys a newspaper, tin of baked beans or a packet of Polo's with a credit card, you won't have to go through the hardship of entering your PIN number or signing your name. Instead, you just wave your card over a "secure scanning device" - probably an RFID chip or something.

It's the latest idea in turning us into a 'cash-less' society where coins become obsolete and where computers can literally track you up and down the high street.
But it's not actually a new idea. Anyone who lived in Leeds in 1997 will probably remember some strange ATM machines popping up with 'Visa Cash' logos plastered all over them. The idea was pretty similar to this "new" system. You loaded money onto the card (think of a pay-as-you-go mobile phone) and then went and spent it on low value goods. It was supposed to be a hassle-free way to buy things without the need for lose change.

It was rubbish. The shops didn't accept it, people didn't get the cards and the trial was a massive waste of everyone's time. In the end, I seem to remember Visa giving away cards with Leeds University ID cards, just so that somebody would actually be able to participate in the trial. A similar thing happened with Mondex, which was an equally big failure.

Needless to say, I can't see how this 'fresh' and 'innovative' idea won't suffer the same fate. People will continue to spend their coins where they please, small retailers won't be best pleased with an idea that encourages needless card use and of course, those "odd tenners" soon add up when the bill turns up.

These people really must try harder.