Contactless Challenge Day 9: Jon edges towards victory

With only one day remaining of our inaugural contactless challenge, our two competitors have been desperately searching for new ways to boost their total points – even if they are more than 700 miles apart. As revealed yesterday, Ewan has taken his contactless challenge international in Barcelona, while Jon continues in London.

However, Ewan failed to narrow the gap during the course of the penultimate day, meaning that Jon still leads by a seemingly insurmountable margin of 69 points: 222 to 153. If this were a boxing match, this may be the point at which a trainer may consider throwing in the towel, but with 24 hours still to go, there’s still a chance either of our ‘fighters’ could land a knockout blow. Could either of our cashless crusaders embark on a Jack Bauer-esque rampage and complete the challenge in its entirety?

As the home of the annual Mobile World Congress, which next year will move to a new showground (check out Ewan’s first look at the new Fira Gran Via venue here), one may expect Barcelona to be well-equipped to handle contactless payments. So far, however, this hasn’t proved to be the case. While many outlets in London have shown themselves to be NFC-friendly over the past week, the Catalan capital has so far proved a far harder task.

So with time running out, can anyone help our two contestants? As things stand, neither has successfully been able to pay contactlessly for a haircut or see a film at the cinema, whilst ‘buying a round of drinks’ is one of the tasks still remaining on Ewan’s NFC itinerary. So if you’re a Barcelona local, or even a tech-savvy tourist, be sure to let Ewan know where he can use his Samsung Galaxy S3 to pay – he may even offer to share his round with you as a thank you. Find him @ew4n or on #GemaltoNFC.

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