Almost 1.5 Million Contactless Payments made per day in Q3 2019

Consumers made almost 1.5 million contactless payments a day in Q3 2019, according to the latest contactless update from Banking & Payments Federation Ireland’s Payment Monitor. The number of contactless credit and debit card payments grew by 44% year-on-year with nearly 135 million payments valued at more than €1.6 billion.

In volume terms, an estimated 41% of all credit and debit card payments were contactless in Q3 2019, while 11% of the value of card payments were contactless. A further 38% of the value of card payments was for eCommerce (online) transactions according to the Central Bank of Ireland, highlighting the importance of a successful implementation of the strong customer authentication requirements for online card payments under PSD2 by 31 December 2020.

Contactless payments are relatively low value, averaging €12.03 per payment in Q3 2019, compared with €40.73 for debit cards and €75.86 for credit cards.

Speaking about the continued growth in contactless payments, Brian Hayes, BPFI Chief Executive, stated:

“Consumers want fast, simple and secure payments. That’s why they have adopted contactless payment so quickly. With contactless-enabled cards already in most wallets, future growth will come mainly from increased usage of contactless payments and the latest figures show that consumers are using contactless payments more and more: consumers are already making some 1.5 million contactless payments per day.

“At the same time, more than one-third of card spending was online. A successful implementation of the strong customer authentication requirements for online card payments in Europe will be crucial to ensure that online retailers and their customers.”

The BPFI Payments Monitor report is available from their website here.