Contactless Payments: All Rise

Some comments are just too long for Twitter but I’m unsure they are worthy of a post like this. Still, having no other place I want to comment, here goes.

Last October Apple launched Apple Pay; the contactless payment mechanism using your mobile phone and not a plastic credit card. At the time I wrote a quick summary of my payment day for those who were new to contactless payments (hint: not really aimed at the UK market). It’s now pretty mainstream.

According to the BBC, in the UK, £2.3billion was transacted this way in 2014 where “30% of all transactions [in London] below £20 were contactless,” according to Barclaycard. Last Friday the BBC even had a Six O’Clock News item on the rise of contactless payments, with the three-fold year-on-year rise amusingly illustrated with loaf tins at a bakers (pun, one assumes, absolutely intended). They also noted an increased transaction limit is coming, which is useful. See the video on BBC News.

But no mention of any of the non-plastic card ways to pay: pay tags or mobile phones. I found that a bit odd given they are likely to grow quickly as they are introduced.