Woolies Calls For Tap-And-Go Limit From $100 To $250
CANBERRA: High-powered reps from government departments are sitting down with supermarket organisers and supply-chain operators in a bid to prevent the current panic-buying craze that has seen vast rows of empty shelves in most supermarts – and tackle other emerging supermarket problems, including unnecessary checkout delays.
Spurred on by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Department of Home Affairs, the newly formed Supermarket Taskforce at this stage involves representatives from major chains Coles, Woolworths, Aldi and IGA. They are being encouraged to work together in a way that might normally be frowned on as collusion.
In one case, the grocery chains this week got together to ask the Government and Aussie banks to raise the current $100 limit on contactless card transactions to $250, there-by preventing hundreds of thousands of customers having to stab away at PIN-pad keys during the current pandemic.
Woolies chief Brad Banducci yesterday told ABC Radio the supermarts are encouraging such tap-and-go processing, not only because it’s quicker, but because “the fewer touchpoints involved, the less risk there is in the store.”
Banducci said the proposed $250 extension would see 350,000 fewer physical interactions required between customers and PIN pads – though it wasn’t clear whether yesterday whether this number of keystrokes would be saved daily, weekly or monthly.
Coles and Woolies are also understood to be discussing putting new limits on many stock items to prevent binge-buying like last week’s extraordinary raids on toilet paper shelves.