Norway, Finland and New Zealand are the three countries closest to becoming cashless societies, followed by Hong Kong, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, the UK, Singapore and the Netherlands, according to research published by Merchant Machine... More
The number of merchants worldwide using software point of sale (sPOS) solutions to accept contactless payments on an ordinary NFC smartphone or tablet will increase from 6m in 2022 to more than 34.5m by 2027, according to Juniper Research... More
The number of stores worldwide that enable customers to self-scan their purchases on their own smartphone or a device provided by the merchant rose by 10,000 during 2021 to reach a total of 46,000, but that total is set to more than triple and exceed 161,000 globally by 2027, according to Retail Banking Research (RBR)... More
The total value of digital wallet transactions globally will exceed US$12tn in 2026, up from US$7.5tn in 2022, and the total number of digital wallet users worldwide will increase from 3.4 billion in 2022 to more than 5.2 billion in 2026, according to a forecast by Juniper Research... More
More than eight in ten consumers have used “an NFC contactless card or mobile payment wallet” (85%) and contactless payment card usage has increased by 30% over the past two years, according to a survey of consumers in nine countries around the world that has been conducted for the NFC Forum... More
Just over a third of UK consumers now have a digital wallet (34%), but that proportion rises to more than two thirds among 18-34 year olds (64%) compared with just 18% among 54-65 year olds, a survey has found... More
More than 500,000 students at 100 higher education facilities across the USA have now added an NFC-enabled digital campus card to Apple Wallet or Google Pay on their NFC smartphone or smartwatch, according to campus card provider Transact... More
More than nine in ten public transport users worldwide expect transit services to offer contactless fare payment options (91%) and just under half prefer to make contactless payments for their transit fares (45%), according to Visa’s 2022 Future of Urban mobility survey... More
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven a “global surge” in digital payments with two-thirds of adults worldwide now making or receiving digital payments, rising from 35% in 2014 to 57% in 2021 in developing economies and from 88% in 2014 to 95% in 2021 in high-income economies, according to the World Bank’s Global Findex 2021 database... More
Nearly one in five Chinese consumers have downloaded the country’s official digital yuan wallet app (19%), with the majority of them mainly using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) for ecommerce purchases (72%) and payments for public services such as transportation (67%), a survey by US research firm Morning Consult has found... More
The total number of contactless payment cards and modules shipped globally exceeded 2bn for the first time and accounted for more than three-quarters of the overall total of 2.63bn smart payment card and module shipments during 2021 (76%), according to figures released by the Smart Payment Association (SPA)... More
More than nine in ten card present transactions conducted globally (90.44%) were made using EMV chip-enabled payment cards between January and December 2021, up from 88.55% in 2020, according to standards body EMVCo... More
Nearly two-thirds of consumers in Ireland now make contactless payments with a mobile phone, smartwatch or other device (65%) at least once a month compared with an average of just over half of consumers in other countries (55%), a survey has found... More
Two in three Europeans (66%) would use the European Digital Identity Wallet (EDIW) that the European Union plans to start piloting in 2023, a survey has found... More
Total transaction values for remote mobile payments authorised using biometric authentication technologies such as face or fingerprint recognition worldwide will reach US$1.2tn by 2027 compared with US$332bn in 2022, according to a forecast by Juniper Research... More
Six in ten consumers in Germany now make contactless payments with their smartphone or a contactless card (60%), an increase from 56% in 2021 and 47% in 2020, according to a survey conducted by Postbank... More
The total number of payments in the USA made using cash fell from just over one in four in 2019 (26%) to under one in five in 2020 (19%) before increasing slightly to 20% in 2021, the Federal Reserve reports... More
The central bank of Bangladesh has announced that it has added approval for contactless debit and prepaid card payments in a circular that also sets a PIN-free transaction limit of Tk3,000 (US$35) and requires card issuers to notify customers of each transaction via SMS... More
The Bank of Ghana (BOG) is to pilot a two-tier token-based retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) that can be used with either a digital wallet app managed by a financial institution or a physical hardware wallet such as a contactless smart card that can be used offline and by unbanked consumers... More
The total transaction values of contactless payments made using a smart device processed by retail and commercial clients of South Africa’s First National Bank (FNB) has increased from R640m (US$43m) in 2020 to “in excess” of R4.2bn (US$3bn) in 2021, the bank reports... More