NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight– October will mark the fifth anniversary of the launch of Apple Pay in the U.S., Apple’s first country for its groundbreaking NFC payments service.
But in terms of usage, a more significant digital payments rollout is happening more quietly now in the U.S.–that of contactless credit and debit cards. And Visa Inc. CEO Al Kelly, speaking this week to financial analysts after the release of the payments network’s fiscal third quarter results, said Visa expects that more than 300 million Visa-branded debit and credit cards in the U.S.–around one-third of the total number of Visa cards on issue in the country–will be enabled for contactless by the end of next year.
Big Banks Move on Contactless
That follows the 100 million contactless Visa-branded credit and debit cards that the network projects will be in the hands of consumers by the end of this year. A significant percentage of those will be cards now being issued by JPMorgan Chase, the No. 1 credit card issuer in the U.S. The bank began its massive contactless card rollout late last year for credit cards and said it would start issuing new and replacement Chase debit cards in the second half of this year.
