PayPass in the most unlikely of places

My Morgan Stanley Dean Whitter credit card has been replaced by a Barclaycard. It’s been replaced, sold, renamed so many times it’s hard to keep up. MSDW->Morgan Stanley->Goldfish->Barclaycard, probably some others I didn’t pay attention to. But what is interesting (to me, anyway) is that it’s the first card I’ve had with PayPass integrated. They’ve got readers all over London, but who wants to go there?

Rather surprisingly, the first place I saw a terminal outside of the M25 was yesterday in the depths of Yorkshire. We had met up with my folks at Nostell Priory, about half-way & an opportunity to use the National Trust memberships. Plus the cakes in the coffee shop are usually good, plenty of space to walk the dog & one of the nicest historic houses – there were rooms where I actually thought “if I decorated my room like this, I could probably live in it”. Which doesn’t happen often, as they’re usually like Belton or Kedleston House.

And in the gift shop, they had a brand new Barclays PayPass/PayWave terminal. Unfortunately my card isn’t active until tomorrow & the PIN numbers only turned up when we’d returned home, so we weren’t able to try the new technology. Plus the staff weren’t fantastically competent with the till or Chip&PIN machine so it would have just confused them even more. I next expect the National Trust to announce something like they’re rolling out Wifi hotspots to all their locations, they’ve already got an excellent audio tour at Southwell & all the little ‘toys’ make the visit a bit more enjoyable.