A Contactless Conundrum

With Auckland entering its 4th Covid level 3 lockdown this month, many businesses were forced to rethink how they serviced their customers. One of the most challenging aspects was how to keep people safe at the till, enabling customers to pay but remain contactless.

When Kiwis face a challenge, we are famous for our resourcefulness and ingenuity in solving problems. Often referred to as ‘the number 8 wire’ solution, Kiwis have a knack of finding unique answers to everyday issues that would stump others.

With a lack of contactless payment options in New Zealand, and a need to receive payments for items in lockdown, the Kiwi Contactless Payments solutions were born. Some of these included:

Swipe My Lunchbox: A crafty thinking hardware store placed their PayWave terminal in a plastic lunchbox. Upon payment request, customers were required to rub their cards on the top of the lunch box, hoping for a connection with the terminal within.

Take My Number: One coffee shop made additional use of the plastic perspex barrier placed between the till and the customer. On the plastic they wrote down their 16-digit bank account number. Customers would open their banking app, create a new payee, enter the account number, pay the money, and show the server the payment confirmation. Coffee served!

Spot Me Bro: Another clever café relied on the good will of their customers and wrote the customer’s name and order on a piece of paper. This was held as an IOU, hoping the customer would return post lockdown and settle the bill. Hopefully the ‘Be Kind’ motto resulted in repayment to the trusting café owner.

While we applaud the genius of the Kiwi entrepreneur, Dosh wants to make this process much simpler and convenient for both customers and sellers. We will be introducing payments by QR code, a contactless payment that requires the customer to scan the store QR code and enter the payment amount. It’s that easy. Stores will print their QR code and place on the counter, or stick to the perspex if that is preferred!

Join our waitlist to be amongst the first signed up for our contactless payment solution.

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