Contactless payments in Europe passed a major milestone as Visa Europe announced 3 billion contactless transactions were made in the last 12 months – nearly tripling that of the same period in the previous year.
Figures show that European consumers used their cards 360 million times in April, alone – that’s
Europeans tap contactless 3 billion times in the last 12 months
nearly 140 transactions per second and a 150% increase from the 143 million transactions in April 2015 – with the average value rising 12% to €13.83.
Contactless payments as a proportion of all Visa-processed face-to-face payments have risen from 1-in-60 in 2013 to more than 1-in-5 today. The popularity of this fast way to pay has been driven by new “everyday spend” merchants incorporating contactless into their check-out.
Consumers have been using contactless to pay for their lunches, lattes and much more, with restaurants experiencing the greatest year-on-year growth in contactless transactions (153%), followed by general retail (146%), super markets (119%) and, food and drink including fast food (96%).
Today, there are more than 3.2 million terminals used in stores and restaurants across the continent, up 23% from 2.6 million at the end of April 2015. This rate will continue to accelerate as most new payment terminals deployed across Europe from January this year are contactless-enabled, helping merchants achieve the target of all terminals in Europe accepting contactless payments by 2020.
Consumers in the Poland, Spain and the UK use contactless the most. British contactless adoption grew by 300% from 51 million transactions in April 2015 to 153 million in April 2016.
The continued success of contactless commuting on Transport for London services is one reason for this accelerated growth, as there have been more than 400 million contactless journeys since launch (nearly 9 in 10 of which have been using Visa cards). Additionally, the launch of mobile payment service, Apple Pay, as well as the Barclaycard’s bPay solutions, have encouraged consumers to adopt new ways to pay.
Some of the most popular contactless merchants in the UK include Tesco, The Co-Operative, Transport for London, McDonald’s and Marks & Spencer.
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