Contactless payments are not only safer, but they are also really convenient. There is no question that contactless payment will continue to play an increasingly important role in retail and commerce even once we are past this pandemic. While there will be some customers who prefer or have no choice but to use cash, the acceleration in contactless payment from COVID-19 is here to stay.

Many consumers that are concerned about COVID-19 are doing everything they can to reduce contact with anything or anyone in the store. Contactless payments are an appreciated service that many retailers now offer and the consumer adoption is growing during the pandemic and it will become a habit for the future. Contactless payment and pay at the table is also quickly becoming a new standard in full service restaurants, which is welcomed by guests as they now don’t have to lose sight of their cards and it increases payment card security.

This is a tipping point, for sure. However to become totally ubiquitous there needs to be easy access for EVERYONE and — right now — for the 30 million below the poverty line in this country, downloading apps and maintaining Venmo accounts is not that easy. Same goes for the elderly. We opened a grocery store outside of Chicago that was cashless — for about a month. Then reality set in. It’s definitely the future of monetary exchange but, like many things, the trick will be to figure it out for all.

This is the optimum time for a broader acceptance of contactless payments. More and more businesses are emphasizing contactless over paying with cash. There will have to be a cash option for those that can’t or don’t want to, but I have seen a great increase in contactless payments for almost all retail transactions.

Mobile and contactless payments have been the future of in-person payments for the past several years, and like many other customer conveniences which have seen rapid adoption during the pandemic consumers are seeing the benefits and will likely maintain adoption. If you walk around a store, pre-pandemic or even now, you will find the majority of shoppers with phones in their hand but essentially none with their credit cards out. As the U.S. continues its push towards a cashless society, it’s logical that frictionless payments become the more attractive option than taking the extra step of utilizing a physical payment card for payment. And for those who choose to use payment cards, a “tap and go” payment is certainly more convenient than a card swipe or insert. The challenge is the inconsistent adoption and support by the retail community which results in consumers having to utilize more traditional payment approaches at many of the stores they shop. However as the pandemic continues to drive consumer demand for mobile and contactless, the retail community is responding… Read more »

The coronavirus has given contactless payments the boost it needed to gain major adoption, and everyone just implementing it will wonder why they didn’t deploy it sooner.

Like the article says, there’s no evidence COVID-19 can be transmitted by cash or credit cards but we have planted a seed that it can, and we all know perception is reality. Yes, mobile pay is more convenient when you pay with your phone, but even with a contactless credit card you still have to dig it out of your wallet. What contactless payment really does is give consumers a false sense of security, and puts more money in the banks’ pockets.

Contactless will continue to grow in NA with several factors contributing to the growth including the pandemic. However cash will remain very important for several more years for many retail segments. This is driven by the ~7 to ~10 percent of the people in the U.S. who are unbanked and the additional ~15 percent who are underbanked. The major credit/debit card issuers have made a big push in the last year to issue a large number of contactless cards which will also help increase the number of contactless transactions. The other major factor contributing to the increase in contactless will be the broader acceptance of mobile wallets and money transfer tools. It is also interesting to note that many retailers do not understand that in almost all cases a debit transaction under $12 costs them more in processing fees than that same transaction processed as a credit transaction.

Mobile and contactless payment have been around for years. Back in 1995 Bill Gates wrote “The Road Ahead” and predicted cashless payments. COVID-19 pushed us into the future. The technology was here, but it wasn’t adopted yet. Now it is being adopted and embraced by much of the public. The issue with transactional fees will work itself out. The big negative is the need of consumers to have credit cards and bank accounts that are tied to their smartphones. There is a percentage of our population that this doesn’t work for.

Acceleration! Acceleration! Acceleration! This is how the pandemic has affected so many things. Trends that we saw were five to 10 years off are now spreading. As a famous football coach said, “The future is now.” As we have discussed many times, habits are naturally hard to change — then when a disruption comes, they do change and new habits are formed. With regard to mobile pay, I checked the ranking by country. Not surprisingly China was first (India was second). But to my surprise, it measured Chinese mobile payments at 39.5 percent. My observation is that it is considerably more than that in China. Almost no one carries cash. Mobile pay is accepted for transactions that are the equivalent of 1 RNB (about 14 cents U.S.) . Benefits? Convenience! Convenience! Convenience! For years now, everything retail has been about convenience. For this, it means less “stuff” (multiple credit cards and cash) to carry. Sweden is on its way to being totally cashless (only 2 percent of transactions include cash). For me, I must carry… Read more »

This is a tipping point for consumers regarding contactless payments, which are here to stay and will only increase in usage beyond the pandemic. Convenience was already becoming king with consumers and COVID-19 concerns have given contactless payments the last “push” needed to gain mainstream adoption. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we are approaching a cashless society, but the writing is on the wall for payments in general that aren’t contactless – the convenience is now recognized as too great. Retailers will look to push for payment fee reform as a result as their margins are being squeezed from every angle these days with every new consumer convenience eating away at that margin bit by bit.

In a word, yes. As the pandemic continues, consumers are taking necessary precautions including mobile and contactless payments to help stop community spread of the virus. But this does have potential downsides to retailers. In addition to transaction costs, retailers are at risk of carding attacks in which criminals use bots to test lists of recently stolen credit or debit card information on merchant sites. Retailers can end up paying a heavy price if they are hit with a carding attack. For example, payment processors can block all transactions if the carding attacks are not handled quickly, which can result in lost revenue. As a retailer, you are responsible for keeping the chargeback and card-not-present (CNP) fraud levels under control. It’s important that retailers are prepared for this situation with the right defenses in place on their payment sites.