Royal Dutch Shell PLC says it plans to begin issuing a closed-loop payment card in January that would let people make purchases through automated clearing house debits to their bank accounts.
The Shell Saver Card is to use an ACH payment service from First Data Corp.
Timothy J. Horton, the vice president of product development at the Denver processor's Telecheck Services Inc. unit, said that Shell would be the first national client for his company's ConnectPay electronic payment service.
Telecheck is to supply payment verification services to Shell.
The Shell card will be availabe, starting Jan. 5, at more than 14,000 gas stations nationwide.
Shell said that using ACH payments instead of credit or debit cards could save retailers up to 50% on fees per transaction.
Elizabeth Hudson, the head of U.S. consumer cards at Shell Oil Products U.S., said in an interview Friday that the ACH card also would drive customer loyalty to the Shell brand among a group that does not carry one of Shell's existing payment cards.
She said the company had a 40% increase in "incremental loyalty" during a test of Solidus Networks Inc.'s Pay By Touch biometric ACH system, but the trial ended when the processor went out of business last March.
"This is the next evolution of ACH," she said.
Consumers will enroll online by suppling personal information, including bank routing and checking account numbers, and will receive discounts on gas purchases when using the cards.
Shell said the card can be used at participating Shell-branded stations for any purchases except lottery tickets.
Mr. Horton said that the ConnectPay service works with magnetic stripe cards, bar coded cards, or other unique identifiers, such as the contactless Go-Tag that First Data introduced in August, which uses radio frequency ID.
