Barclaycard sees end of road for plastic credit cards

Britain's biggest credit card provider, Barclaycard, is to boost its contactless payment system which it believes will mean the physical plastic credit card will die out in the foreseeable future.

Barclaycard, owned by Barclays Plc, introduced its first contactless credit card as the OnePulse product a year ago, in which a microchip allows customers to pay for goods by touching the card against a reader without having to remove it from their wallet or purse.

The group now plans to issue over one million contactless cards by the end of this year. Barclaycard then plans to make it possible to put the chip into a mobile phone or key fob, meaning the need to carry a plastic credit card will disappear.

"In time you won't have to carry a plastic credit card around with you if you don't want to, although some people will choose to for nostalgic reasons," Barclaycard chief executive officer Antony Jenkins said in a statement.

"If I had said to you 10 years ago that you couldn't pay with a cheque at the supermarket, you wouldn't have believed me. That is now the reality, and we see plastic cards going the same way eventually," Mr Jenkins added.