Tesco customers call for contactless limit rise

Our story starts with the following promoted tweet from Visa: “You can now use contactless for payments up to £45, in many stores. Shop securely with Visa. How You Pay Matters”.

This sparked a furious backlash with many Twitter users weighing in to lambaste Tesco for failing to follow the example of Morrisons, Iceland and Waitrose and increase the contactless payments limit from £30 to £45.

Tesco is carrying out a trial of the new limit in a small number stores, but it is currently unclear as to when this will be rolled out across its estate. In the meantime, it has been pushing its mobile payments/loyalty app.

“Staff claim that someone from head office has to go to the store and reset all the terminals at every checkout,” said one Twitter user.

“Sort it out so this applies for @Tesco. What's the point of social distancing efforts in store yet still having to touch the chip and PIN keypad?” another asked.

“Have to still use a pin pad for amounts over £30 and allowing families and couples into stores, again increasing the risk of spreading. Show some intelligence please Tesco!” fumed another.

Bravo!

Tesco CTO Guus Dekkers and CEO Dave Lewis recently praised the grocery giant’s technology team for their hard work during the coronavirus outbreak.

Around 2,100 employees were invited to join a broadcast earlier this month.

“Dave wanted to take the time to recognise the work the technology team has done to help keep the business running during the Covid-19 pandemic. More than just keeping the lights on, the team has worked incredibly hard to respond to the needs of our customers and the demands the pandemic has placed on us all,” James Franklin, Head of Technology Communications, said in a LinkedIn post.

“With our entire technology workforce working remotely, and seeing a 700% increase in the use of Teams to keep us all connected, we've doubled our delivery slots capacity to more than one million a week, and spun up two new distribution centres in record time.”

“We’ve also increased the capacity on our recruitment website by a factor of 14, enabled three-quarters of our previously entirely office-based customer engagement centre team to work from home, and most importantly, provided hundreds of thousands of delivery slots per week for vulnerable customers.”

“My time with Tesco Technology is almost up, but what I've been part of here, even before the coronavirus, has been truly inspirational,” he concluded.