The shots Guide to...Contactless Payment

After a slow introduction in 2007, contactless cards are now a part of everyday life, with one in every five card payments contactless. Following this trend, a number of campaigns have been using contactless payment systems to raise instant money for charities and other organisations, alongside other novel uses. Discover the best of these with our guide to how to use contactless payment in a campaign.

Charity Campaigns

Of those using contactless in their campaigns, charities by far represent the biggest group. It makes sense. With previous charity advertising, there has always been a remove; an ad could encourage you to text a number or register online or whatever, but it couldn't directly take your money there and then.

Contactless technology changes this. You can put a pay point directly on your billboard, creating a new source of donations.

The most creative campaign to do this was Melanoma Institute Australia's Stop the Spread of Melanoma [above], created by Disciple. For this, they put a tap-and-pay point next to an animation of a melanoma, that shrunk every time someone made a payment - a literal depiction of what the money they had just spent would be doing.

(NOTE: If you liked this campaign, check out a recent billboard from NHS Blood and Transplant with 23Red that featured a sick-looking person who got better every time someone gave augmented reality blood via a phone app. Click here to read more.)

Cancer Research took a similar approach in 2015 when they trailed putting contactless technology in charity shop windows. When people tapped their cards onto the reader, £2 would be donated and a video would play showing someone who was helped by the donation.

A more recent ad takes advantage of the nature of contactless payment. For The Untouchables, created by Publicis Russia for Citi, Mastercard and Bela Fund, they created contactless billboards that benefited those suffering with epidermolysis bullosa, a condition that makes skin incredibly fragile and prone to blistering and tearing. With these kids being literally untouchable, a card system that doesn't involve touch becomes a poignant metaphor as well as a money-raising opportunity.

Other Uses

With developments like Apple Pay, our idea of what a payment card looks like has started to change. This development has been used in a number of weird and wonderful campaigns that turn other things into payment cards. Things like...

...Dogs

Earlier in 2017, OgilvyOne created DogPay for Purina dog food brand Bakers, which turned any dog with an ID chip into a contactless payment card, albeit one that was more likely to shit on your rug than your Visa or AmEx.

...and Twitter Accounts.

Speaking of American Express, in 2012 a number of brands teamed up with the credit card company to create TwitterSync, which allowed people to pay by linking their accounts to their card, with payment made via certain hashtags.

Click here to revisit Barclays' classic Waterslide advert, promoting their contactless payment cards.