'Mobile' payments to transform shopping

 By Dan Hyde

Shoppers will next year be able to use their mobile phone to pay in just 12 seconds at stores such as WH Smith, Lidl, Superdrug and McDonald's, The Telegraph can disclose. 

A major deal has been struck to allow thousands of retailers across Britain to support Zapp, a new mobile phone payment app backed by Britain’s biggest banks. 

Zapp will this morning [thurs] say that it has entered a partnership to work with payments firm Worldpay, which provides the card machines at tills in shops and payment software for online retailers. 

The Zapp app, due for launch in summer 2014, is designed to work with the type of online banking applications offered by Barclays, NatWest, Nationwide and Lloyds. 

It will work using a code sent to a customer’s smartphone at the till or online checkout. Alternatively customers will be able to scan a code into the handset from a bill in a restaurant or the screen on a modern card machine. 

The code will contain all the information needed to complete the transaction, including the price, retailer and complete details of the goods being bought. This will appear on screen. 

Once a customer has logged into mobile banking app on their phone, the transaction can be completed with a tap of the finger. 

Testing by Zapp said that the whole process can take just 12 seconds. This is considerably less than online checkout purchase times, which are never less than one minute 30 seconds, it said. 

Shoppers will also be able to check their balance before buying. 

Zapp has already garnered the support of several major high street banks, but chief executive Peter Keenan, said the tie-up with payments processor Worldpay is a “massive" step. This is because the app’s success relies heavily on shops, restaurants, and small businesses signing up to the scheme and promoting it. 

By linking one of the largest payment firms, Worldpay, Zapp will be made available at thousands of shops across Britain. To give context, Worldpay was responsible for processing half of all the transactions made on credit and debit cards last year. 

Mr Keenan said Zapp will make paying for goods and services “slicker than Amazon”. He said the end goal would be to develop the service so that shoppers could leave their wallet at home. 

He said: “Zapp will be safer and faster than almost any other payment method and substantially reduce fraud, as you will need to authenticate the purchase by logging into your online or mobile banking.”