Tesco are to roll out their own mobile payment wallet by the end of the year. Called PayQwiq, it’s already available to use in London and Edinburgh Tesco stores as well as Northern Ireland and Plymouth.
The app is bar code based, not NFC which Apple and Android Pay use. Bar code based payments is the route PayPal took for their PayPal Check In product. PayPal needed retailers to implement software for their full Check In solution, but as an interim step introduced bar codes which the mobile app generated and retailers then scanned to take payment. It was clunky and that’s also a problem with Tesco PayQwiq.
Tesco’s second issue is that it’s a one retailer solution. Sure you can add your debit and credit cards to PayQwiq as well as your Tesco Club Card which will enable you to collect points automatically when paying with the app. But what happens the day you pop into an alternative supermarket or in fact shop with any other retailer? PayQwiq then starts to look pretty useless.
Tesco is the largest grocery retailer in the UK. Is that enough to convince shoppers to use their own payment app? The only real advantage PayQwiq offers is a £400 payment limit compared to the current thirty quid offered by alternatives.
Personally I want one mobile app that will allow me to shop anywhere. I don’t want a different payment app for each retailer. Tesco need to find partners that will also accept PayQwiq or it’s hard to see how it’ll grow.
If Apple and Android Pay increase their payment limits (basically if limits for contactless payments increase) PayQwiq could very quickly become yet another relic of the Internet.
