McDonald's adds card payments to menu

Fast food addicts will soon be able to pay for their fix of Big Mac meals with credit and debit cards as part of plans by McDonald's to introduce new authorisation technology at cash tills.

Under the six-year deal with Transaction Network Services, McDonald's is currently installing the latest point-of-sale (POS) equipment in Northampton as part of the chip and PIN credit card trials that will see PINs keyed in at cash till terminals instead of customers having to signing a paper receipt.

Outlets in Scotland are being upgraded to accept standard credit and debit card payments ahead of a rollout across all of McDonald's 1,200 restaurants in the UK.

TNS will provide McDonald's with a high-speed network connection to acquiring banks that will allow live authorisation of the predicted high volumes of card transactions.

Ivan Brooks, CIO at McDonald's in the UK, said in a statement that new technology now means that card transactions can be conducted at least as fast as cash transactions – a factor which had previously prevented the fast food chain from accepting card payments.

"Previously cheaper, quicker and more convenient to our customers to conduct cash transactions, McDonald's has aligned itself with TNS because it can deliver proven network routing capability that is fast, reliable and cost-effective" he said.

He added authorisation times for card payments are now down to less than five seconds.