Major card issuers are rolling out contactless smart cards for low value, fast, secure and convenient payments. Over 50 million are now in use worldwide and one of Scotland’s leading product development companies, i4 Product Design, has created the initial design concept for a cutting-edge, contactless card payment device aimed at all retailers, called PoS Paddle Tap-It, which has just launched.

i4 Product Design was also responsible for the entire product design and manufacturing process on behalf of Tailwind Solutions.

Instead of swiping a payment card or handing a card to a cashier, consumers simply present their debit/credit card or NFC enabled mobile phone to the PoS Paddle Tap-It and their payment is quickly processed. This contactless payment technology is being added to current Chip & PIN systems. All contactless payment acceptance devices, such as PoS Paddle Tap-It, will display the logo. The PoS Paddle Tap-It was designed to work with all retailers’ existing Chip & PIN configurations.

To complement PoS Paddle Tap-It, i4 Product Design also developed and managed the manufacturing of Tailwind Solution’s other new product, PoS Paddle SafeBase. This cleverly designed unit enables retailers to lock down their Chip & PIN devices to the counter, to prevent theft and subsequent fraud. It is the first locking/pivoting product of its type. i4 Product Design developed PoS Paddle SafeBase in such a way that it is compatible with all retailers’ existing Chip & PIN devices.

The Edinburgh company i4 Product Design was appointed last summer by Dunfermline-based Tailwind Solutions, a strategic marketing consultancy specialising in card payment systems, based on the strength of i4’s previous work. Tailwind Solutions is working with many industry partners in bringing its PoS Paddle products to market, including Smart Technology Solutions (STS), an innovator in smart card solutions, which has already integrated PoS Paddle Tap-It with its market leading software for the retail sector.

Gordon Miller, Director for i4 Product Design said: “Working on this calibre of project allows us to showcase perfectly what we do; help leading companies develop new, innovative and cutting edge products, cost-effectively.

“For Tailwind Solutions, we were tasked with designing a secure, cost-effective and durable, contactless payment device (Tap-It) and the base unit to securely lock down retailers existing Chip & PIN devices (SafeBase). The brief required both devices to be extremely flexible, in order to be compatible with the existing range of Chip & PIN readers in the market.

“They needed to be cost-effective for retailers to buy, easy for consumers to use, attractive and designed to accommodate all electronic point of sale devices (the retailers’ tills) and compact enough to minimise the use of valuable counter space.”

Mark Stewart, Co-Director at Tailwind Solutions, said: “Our PoS Paddle concept is revolutionary, but we knew that would count for little if it wasn’t flexible and cost-effective enough to suit the huge range of retail environments and cost constraints across the market.

“Choosing i4 Product Design to develop our concept into a living product was an easy decision. We have worked with i4 personnel on several projects in the past and have always found them to be creative, keen to understand our business, flexible and open to new ideas.

“We presented a huge challenge with our PoS Paddle design brief, but as ever, i4 has exceeded all our expectations.”