Visa Europe continues to promote its contactless progress, especially the UK market–noting that spending with its Visa payWave application increased five-fold in June.
While the spending with contactless remains small compared with total card spending, it signals a ramp-up in the UK and, to a lesser extent, in Europe for Visa.
Visa payWave users in the UK conducted 51 million contactless transactions between June 2012 and June 2013, spending a total of £338 million (US$529.5 million). These purchases accounted for roughly a quarter of Europe’s total contactless spending among Visa users of €1.5 billion during the period, and slightly over a quarter of the continent’s 187 million total Visa contactless transactions.