NFC TIMES Exclusive Insight – Payments industry backers suggest that U.S. banks could have an incentive to begin contactless rollouts soon, but in the absence of deadlines from the major payments networks, which are rapidly approaching in other markets, there's no guarantee of rollouts in the U.S. on the horizon.
Contactless card issuance is lagging in the U.S., where acceptance has made significant gains and is positioned to make more in the near future.
In a recent webinar organized by the Secure Technology Alliance, Oliver Manahan, director of business development at Infineon Technologies, who formerly worked in emerging payments for both Mastercard and Visa, noted that nearly 50% of all transactions in the U.S. take place at contactless-enabled merchants, up from 46% in the first quarter of 2018, citing data from Visa and Mastercard. That doesn’t mean the transactions were contactless, just that the hardware for contactless was available on the merchant POS terminals.
