The special trill at the till when you pay by Visa

THE beeps and bells from checkout machines – not to mention warnings of unexpected items in the bagging area – are about to be joined by a new sound.

Visa is launching a ‘signature sound’ that will go off whenever its card is used.

Marketing staff at the company spent a year choosing the sound, ruling out some for being too ‘angry’ and even ‘overly intrusive’.

The one that has been chosen, it claims, signals ‘speed and convenience’ and is both ‘energetic and optimistic’.

Customers paying using an app on their smartphone will feel a vibration.

The new sound will launch in January with an advertising campaign featuring Winter Olympics athletes making payments by swiping a card, tapping a phone and completing purchases online.

Lynne Biggar, Visa’s marketing chief, said: ‘You’d be surprised by how excited and how opinionated we all can be about very short sounds. We all are becoming very responsive to the use of sound.’