NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – The CEOs of both Visa and Mastercard in their respective earnings calls yesterday confirmed that contactless payments continued to grow as a share of all face-to-face card payments, with consumer fears of handling cash building on already strong growth trends for the technology.
Visa in a rare disclosure put a rough figure on the percentage of in-store transactions that are contactless in the U.S.–at nearly 10%–which, while it represents strong growth, still lags far behind other developed countries.
Visa chairman and CEO Al Kelly, speaking Thursday on a conference call with financial analysts following release of Visa’s fiscal Q1 2021 results, said contactless represented nearly two-thirds of all face-to-face transactions globally outside of the U.S. He further disclosed that in the U.S., contactless payments had a penetration rate of the "high single digits." While small in comparison to most countries in Europe and Asia Pacific, it represents much progress for the technology in the U.S., where EMV payments from contactless credit and debit cards and card credentials on NFC smartphones and wearables had represented less than 1% of face-to-face card transactions only a couple of years ago.
