Visa Europe said that contactless usage has reached a critical point of adoption across Europe, with monthly transaction numbers reaching more than 19 million in March 2013. Put into money, that’s more than 1 billion EUR which has been spent on contactless cards and smartphones equipped with a Visa payWave app.
In the UK, 1.5 million Visa contactless transactions have been made on London Buses since December, M&S processed over 230,000 contactless transactions every week, while the Post Office installed contactless payment terminals in all of its 11,500 branches. There are now 232,000 terminals installed across the country, with 1 in every 4 Visa cards having contactless payment capabilities.
Pan-European figures look like this:
- There are now 58 million contactless cards in Europe
- Contactless cards and phones with the Visa payWave app can be used at 797,000 acceptance points across the continent
- There are 39 Visa mobile contactless payment projects live across Europe
- Contactless transactions grew 46% between December 2012 and March 2013
- Markets like the UK, Poland and Spain are leading the way in contactless usage
- By the end of 2013, Europeans will be making over 52 million contactless transactions every month.
[Via: CellularNews, Image from LaptopMag]