While the UK’s top UK contactless issuer, Barclays, and its credit card arm, Barclaycard, predict a doubling of contactless transactions this year, numbers remain relatively small, with even the most active users tapping just over four times a month, a spokesman for the issuer confirmed to NFC Times.
While progress by banks and merchants in building the contactless payments infrastructure in the UK and elsewhere in Europe is undeniable–and something that major payment networks, Visa Europe and MasterCard Worldwide, along with such issuers as Barclays and Barclaycard, are strongly touting–use of contactless is not yet an everyday affair in most of Europe. That includes the UK, the country with the largest contactless infrastructure.
“While this can be averaged out across all card holders, not all card holders are active contactless users,” a Barclaycard spokesman told NFC Times. “The average contactless active Barclaycard customer makes over four contactless transactions per month,” he said. Barclays debit card users are believed to be tapping more often than Barclaycard credit card users.
