M&S becomes the first UK food retailer to launch an on-the-spot payment solution—Pay With Me

M&S has launched a brand-new, on-the-spot digital payment solution to help relieve queues at the checkouts and allow customers to shop with confidence this Christmas.

Available at 200 M&S stores (scroll to bottom of the page for a list) Pay With Me allows an M&S colleague to pick out customers waiting in line to pay for just a few items, and quickly process their transaction via a handheld Honeywell¹ device.

The rollout follows a successful trial at seven stores² and is the latest initiative M&S has launched to make shopping quicker and easier for everyone in the run up to Christmas. With each store operating a maximum capacity and carefully counting customers in via a bespoke app linked across all floors, Pay With Me will help to free up space for more customers to enter the store and start shopping.

How Pay With Me works

Colleagues pick out customers waiting in line to pay for just a few items and process the transaction for them using their handheld Honeywell device, which is fully Sparks-enabled and allows contactless (up to the usual £45 limit) and card payments (with no limit).

Customers can also pay using Apple Pay, which has recently been added as a payment option on M&S.com.

Helen Milford, M&S Stores Director said:

“Throughout the year our teams have done a fantastic job of adapting quickly to serve our customers through challenging and changing circumstances. In preparation for Christmas, we have put in place extensive measures to make shopping quicker, easier and safer for everyone—from our longest ever opening hours through to digital queue busting solutions such as our new ‘Pay with Me’—now in over 200 stores. In these final few days we’re focused on delivering for our customers to help them make the most of their Christmas, however they might be celebrating.”

Queue Busting

M&S is pulling out all the stops to make shopping extra special this Christmas, doing everything it can to increase capacity and bust the queues for customers—so they can deliver the magic and sparkle for their loved ones. This includes:

• The 1,800-strong team of Magic Makers on hand to help customers and answer any queries. No M&S door will be seen without a Magic Maker this Christmas, with colleagues sashed-up and handpicked for the role due to their exemplary customer service skills.
• Festive tunnels installed outside each store to shelter customers from the winter weather, should there be a short queue. Decked out with QR codes, they link through to the M&S product developers’ top picks for festive food to provide inspiration while customers wait.
• Offering M&S’s longest-ever opening hours to help give customers more time and more confidence to shop this Christmas. Hours have gradually increased as Christmas approaches, with two-thirds (over 400 stores) of M&S’s estate open until midnight across the busiest days of 21-23 December.
• Installing 1,000 brand-new self-service tills at 69 of its higher footfall stores and rolling out Scan & Shop to 30 stores (including Longbridge, as seen on TikTok) to help speed up the payment process for customers and make shopping easier for them.
• Expanding M&S’s checkout-free technology Mobile Pay Go to every UK store, meaning customers all over the country can skip the queues and pay for their items using their smartphone. Customers scan items as they shop and leave the store without visiting a till, all via the M&S App. Mobile Pay Go is available at all UK M&S owned stores (573).
• Rolling out M&S’s reservation-based shopping service Sparks Book & Shop, which allows customers to reserve a shopping slot at a time that suits them and removes the need to queue, should there be one. Over 350k slots have been booked by customers since launch in November.

All M&S stores continue to have robust cleaning processes in place and extensive signage to encourage customers to be kind, give everyone space & cover their face. For customers shopping online, M&S continues to offer contact-free delivery and free click & collect, no matter what you spend, to over 600 stores.