A new study from Swiss National Bank has revealed that the increases in contactless transaction limits that were rushed through in many countries during the Covid pandemic drove an increase in the use of contactless payments but led to only a minor increase in adoption of the technology... More
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is to add support for NFC payments to the country’s UPI Lite digital wallet, enabling users to conduct transactions on their smartphone even when there is no internet or mobile connection... More
Developing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) system that supports offline transactions on smartphones or standalone custom devices will offer users benefits including enhanced resilience, accessibility, inclusivity and privacy, especially in remote areas without a reliable or affordable internet connection, according to the Bank of Canada... More
Bank of Montreal (BMO) customers can now use their debit card to make contactless fare payments on services operated by transit authorities throughout Canada without their journeys counting towards their monthly free transaction limit... More
The total value of contactless payments made in the UK jumped by 49.7% in 2022, Barclays reports, “as Brits embraced the £100 transaction limit and returned to high street shopping following the easing of all coronavirus restrictions”... More
Consumers in Nepal can now make contactless NFC payments by tapping their smartphone on an NFC reader at the point of sale (POS) without needing an internet connection... More
The Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) has increased the limit for individual contactless transactions made without a PIN from 55 Jordanian dinars (US$77) to 100 Jordanian dinars (US$141) and doubled the country’s daily contactless limit from 150 Jordanian dinars (US$212) to 300 Jordanian dinars (US$423)... More
The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has added a function to its digital yuan payment app that allows users to continue to make offline payments using the central bank digital currency (CBDC) from their Android NFC smartphone even if their device has no power... More
Nearly one in three of all payments in the UK were made using contactless cards or with a smartphone or smart watch in 2021 (32%), a rise of 36% compared with transaction volumes in 2020, according to figures from UK Finance... More
Students attending Hainan Lu Xun Middle School in the Chinese city of Sanya are the first in the country to trial a digital yuan hard wallet device that enables them to make payments to designated merchants on and off the school’s campus using China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) as well as verify their identity using NFC... More
European consumers consider the ability to make instant contactless payments, including person-to-person transfers, to be a priority and “a very important selling point” for a digital euro, according to European Central Bank (ECB) research... 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
Shipments of biometric payment cards with embedded fingerprint sensors will grow by almost 850% and reach a total of 173m worldwide by 2026, according to a forecast by Juniper Research... More
The total transaction value of contactless card payments made in UK stores “surged” by 40.2% in 2021 and the average number of contactless payments made each day increased by 27.5% compared with the previous year, according to Barclaycard... More
The majority of European consumers would feel comfortable with contactless transaction limits of up to €150 (US$169), three times the current European Union limit of €50 (US$56), according to Payments Europe research... More
Customers of Santander bank in the UK can now set their own contactless transaction limit lower than the maximum of £100 (US$132) introduced by the UK government in October... More
More than 488,000 consumers in Nigeria have downloaded an eNaira digital wallet and conducted transactions worth a total of 62m naira (US$151,000) in the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) since its launch in October, according to a Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) spokesman... More
Some 50,000 customers of Starling Bank have chosen to set their own contactless spending limit to a lower amount than the maximum of £100 (US$135) per contactless transaction that the UK government introduced in October... More
Nearly three-quarters of UK consumers (73.1%) want the option to set their own contactless spending limit rather than it being set automatically when the country increases that limit to £100 (US$136) in October, according to a survey by KIS Finance... More
Customers of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland will be able to set their own contactless spending limit when the UK increases its national transaction limit to £100 (US$137) on 15 October... More