History 1978–1989
A social club, an electronic terminal that never caught on, and a new name.
Access Sports & Social Club opens
On 1st September 1981 the Access Sports and Social Club opened at its new premises, 123 Eastern Avenue, Southend-on-Sea. Download the souvenir copy of SCAN (PDF, 54 MB). Many thanks to Barry Tanner for scanning and supplying it for everyone’s enjoyment.
The ACCEPT EFTPOS system
On 15th April 1986 the trade mark “ACCEPT” was registered for “Electrical and electronic apparatus; computing apparatus; electrical and optical data processing apparatus; parts and fittings included in Class 9 for all the aforesaid goods; computer programmes; magnetic tapes and discs, all for recording or bearing data.”
Enlarge pictureThen on 1st October 1986 “ACCEPT” was registered again, this time for “Credit card and charge card services; electronic funds transfer and payment services; all included in Class 36.”
ACCEPT seems to have been a short-lived EFTPOS system. There’s more about it in the merchant booklet Electronic Submission Systems. This was the era when the magnetic stripe was expected to replace the “zip-zap” imprinters still common at the till. ACCEPT terminals were in use in 1989 – 5,562 of them at 3,662 outlets – only to be shelved the year after. Other systems, such as Barclays’ PDQ and NatWest’s Streamline, seemed to dominate the market, and ACCEPT was quickly abandoned.
Its sudden withdrawal may not have been simply down to competition, however. It was during 1989 that the Joint Credit Card Company Limited was renamed Signet Limited: the banks were preparing to sell their stakes in the card processing company.