Chip and PIN for Whitbread group

Whitbread, a hospitality company, is to use an end-to-end card payment system which in its turn will save £1 million charged for payments processing.

The system was developed and provided by the Fidelity National Information services, IBM, Smart Technology solutions and VeriFone. It represents an integrated mobile chip and PIN payments system and it will open the opportunity to direct the company's payments from its Beefeater, Brewers Fayre and Costa Coffee via single payment process.

It is expected to eliminate cases of manual error as well as to quicken payments process.

Due to the system 90% of the company's card readers were modified in compliance with PCI standard.

"Deployment of the integrated payment solution is a groundbreaking step for the leisure industry and means we have the first large restaurant chain with a completely integrated mobile chip and PIN solution. Movement away from 'swipe and sign' in our restaurants means we are no longer liable for fraudulent payments and have also benefited from an improvement in transaction rates as a result of the shift," says Whitbread information systems project manager, Steven Deakin.