One-Fifth Of Payments Now Contactless In The UK

Contactless payments are in.

The UK Cards Association, the trade body for the card payment industry in the U.K., found that buyers used contactless cards for 21 percent of card payments in August of this year. This totals 260.7 million transactions with a value of £2.3 billion ($2.87 billion). Figures have risen from just 7.9 percent of payments, or 89 million transactions, since August of last year.

Further findings show that the value of an average contactless card transaction has also risen in the U.K.: from £7.12 in 2015 to £8.97 in 2016 ($8.90 to $11.21). In the same period, the total number of contactless cards in circulation increased from 74.5 million to 97 million.

In the U.S., contactless card shipments are expected to hit 330 million per annum by 2020. That’s 55 percent of all new credit and debit cards by the end of the decade. That rate is expected to hit 75 percent in Europe in the same time frame.