Touch and go is a new payment card technology that allows debit card users to quickly pay for goods and services by quickly touching an enabled debit card against a terminal.The way in which touch and go works is that there is a chip in the debit card that means that the card can be detected by a special credit card terminal.

If the debit card makes contact against the terminal then this can mean that the terminal can credit the  debit card for the amount of money that is on the terminal as due.  This does not mean that whenever a card touches a terminal that the terminal will take money off it, nor does it mean that a card will be credited if it comes near to, but does not make contact with, the terminal.

Touch and go is only available with certain types of debit cards, and it has to be activated on many of these cards before it can be used.  There are currently a limited amount of terminals that use touch and go, as it is a relatively new technology.

Touch and go is limited in most cases to transactions of $100 or below.  This limit can change according to the debit card.  The sort of transactions that most benefit from the convenience of touch and go tend to be smaller transactions such as food shopping or buying at a convenience store.  These are also less likely to be damaging if they are done fraudulently.

Touch and go cards are covered under the zero liability guarantees, which mean that the credit card processors, such as VISA and MasterCard will cover any losses that come from unauthorised transactions.  There are conditions, such as that the transaction is not helped by the card holder – by for example lending their card – and that the card holder tells the bank or other financial institution that issued the card that there are fraudulent transactions on the card as soon as the card is lost.

For transactions of over $100 will still need to be verified by either chip and pin or signature verification.  Chip and pin is becoming more common in Australia and the intention is that all debit card transactions in Australia will be verified by chip and pin by 2015.

Due to the need for a card terminal, touch and go is not a method that can be used over the internet, for phone transactions or to order via mail order.