Apple’s Good News In The UK — The Contactless Payment Cap Has Been Upped (Slightly)

Apple Pay launched in the U.K. around a month ago — albeit with one very sharp limit. Consumers, due to a cap on contactless payments methods (like Apple Pay, Google Wallet, contactless cards or just about anything that makes use of NFC) were limited to £20 a shot without the need to enter a separate PIN.

That limit was, well, limiting, and so it has been upped — a bit. U.K. residents can now make contactless payments of up to £30 without the need for a PIN.

The hope, says the U.K. Cards Association, is that the increase will spur along more common and habitual card case uses — grocery spending, bars, gifts and restaurants, just to name a few.

The tap limits are a security measure, mostly to insulate against the possibility that a contactless card could be lost. Apple Pay, however, is more than a contactless payment method; it also utilizes bioauthentication and tokenization, which means some U.K. terminal owners have already raised the transaction limits for Apple Pay-specific use cases. Though the new increase now raises the level for every merchant nationwide.

Contactless payments are somewhat more popular across the pond than they are in the U.S. and show signs of being on the rise. U.K. consumers spent £2.5 billion in contactless payments so far in 2015 — more than during all of 2014, when £2.32 billion was spent.

U.K. and Ireland Managing Director for Visa Europe Kevin Jenkins commented that contactless is becoming the “new normal” in the region.

Terminals across the country will start to be updated from today, but the association says it may take a few weeks before national coverage is complete.

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