Nearly 90% of card present payments globally were made using EMV chip cards in 2020

EMV card present transactions graph 2020
ROBUST GROWTH: 2020 figures show that EMV cards now dominate card present transactions

Almost nine in 10 card present transactions conducted globally (86.1%) were made using EMV chip-enabled payment cards between January and December 2020, according to standards body EMVCo.

The total number of EMV payments cards in circulation worldwide reached 10.8bn by the end of 2020, an increase of nearly 1bn on the previous year, with two-thirds (66.4%) of all cards issued worldwide now EMV-enabled.

According to EMVCo’s data, Europe Zone 1 — broadly western Europe — saw the highest percentage of card present transactions made with EMV chip-enabled cards at 99.23%, followed by Africa and the Middle East (98.21%), Europe Zone 2 (96.97%) and Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean (95.43%), Asia (81.03%) and the USA (72.83%).

The USA saw the highest increase in EMV card present transactions, rising nearly 10 percentage points from 62.97% between January and December 2019 to this year’s figure of 72.83%.

EMV chip card adoption rates also surpassed 90% in Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean (90.7%) and Africa and the Middle East (90.4%).

Adoption rates in other regions ranged from 86.5% in Europe Zone 1 and 84.1% in Europe Zone 2 to 63% in the USA and 60.9% in Asia Pacific.

Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean saw the biggest increase in EMV chip card adoption rates with a rise of four percentage points, from 86.7% in 2019 to this year’s figure of 90.7%.

“Surpassing 10bn EMV cards deployed worldwide clearly reflects the benefits that [the] EMV chip offers to merchants, acquirers, card issuers, businesses and consumers through improved transaction security, reduced counterfeit cards and fraud, and a consistent payment experience,” EMVCo’s executive committee chair Junya Tanaka says.

“We are continuing to see significant and sustained momentum for EMV chip technology across all regions, with Asia-Pacific and the United States in particular showing robust growth across both EMV issuance and adoption.”

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