More U.S. consumers are finding that tap-and-go beats swiping or inserting for point-of-sale payment card transactions. It’s no surprise that transit systems have been in the forefront, given that seconds count when riders need to make a mad dash to catch their trains.
Visa reports that overall contactless card usage on its rails has increased from 25% to 33%. Consumers usually have muscle memory when it comes to paying with plastic at checkout counters, and contactless will reinforce this habit.
A NFC World article, which is excerpted below, discusses more on this topic which is excerpted below:
Data on the latest adoption rates for contactless transactions, tokenization, transit payments and secure remote commerce has been made available by Visa CEO Al Kelly — along with details of the revenue model to be used by Plaid, which Visa is to acquire for $5.3bn. Kelly revealed the new adoption stats during the payments networks’ Q1 2020 earnings call.
“We have reached a point where one in every three card-present transactions that runs over our network is tap versus one in four a year ago this quarter,” Kelly said.
“This past year, we doubled the number of countries whose face-to-face transactions are at least two-thirds contactless.
“Transit continues to be a key user case and an important way to habituate tapping behavior. In New York City, on the MTA, Visa crossed 2m taps in November from the beginning of the pilot and 3m in January.”
“We are currently pacing at 350,000 Visa taps a week on the MTA, and nearly one in every 10 transactions in the New York metro area is a tap-to-pay on a Visa card,” Kelly added.
“We also launched Africa’s first contactless transit system in Johannesburg this quarter, in addition to launches in Ho Chi Minh City as well as Taiwan, Sweden and Ukraine.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group
