Nearly 250 million credit or debit cards to be used for contactless payment next year: new study
A new report is predicting that 249 million cards will be used for contactless payments next year, driven by the global migration to EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) standards-based Chip & Pin and the rising contactless infrastructure at the point of sale.
The Contactless Payment Cards: Market Prospects 2013-2018 report by Juniper Research forecasts that growth in usage will initially be driven by early adopter markets such as the UK, Australia, Canada, and Poland. Looking further ahead, it predicts that user numbers will rise in the US following the mandated transition from magnetic-stripe cards.
The report observed that growth in the UK had been bolstered by ticketing as well as retail usage, with more than 3.5 million London bus journeys paid for via contactless payment cards since November 2012. It also highlighted the strong retailer proposition offered by contactless, with faster throughput at checkout, reduced cash handling and increased customer retention allied to an opportunity to use contactless as a mechanism for greater consumer engagement in the form of loyalty cards.
However, the report cautioned that despite recent deployments, contactless POS terminals still account for a small minority of the total in nearly all markets. The report’s author Dr Windsor Holden said: “We’re still at a comparatively early stage in the consumer contactless journey. Awareness of – and confidence in – the technology needs to increase substantially before we move to true mass adoption.”
