Card spending via contactless jumps to £2.5bn in the UK as the payment limit rises to £30
The spending limit on contactless cards has today increased from £20 to £30, as new figures show a surge in spending to £2.5bn in the first six months of the year.
The use of contactless technology to pay in restaurants and shops has soared in popularity since it was first introduced in 2007, when the limit was just £10.
According to data from The UK Cards Association, the trade body for the cards payment industry, spending has almost doubled from £287m per month in January 2015 to £567m in June 2015.
Read more: Will we soon live in a cashless society?
In total, £2.5bn was spent on contactless cards and devices in the first half of 2015, compared with £2.32bn for the whole of 2014.
More than 9.3m contactless cards were issued between January and June this year, with over 69m cards now in circulation.
However other payment methods could soon take their place as firms such as Barclaycard trial wearable technology such as wristbands and mobile payment.
Kevin Jenkins, managing director for UK & Ireland at Visa Europe, said:
“Contactless is becoming the new normal as everyday Britons embrace the speed, convenience and safety of touch-to-pay technology. We’ve seen unprecedented growth in this area, with the number of Visa contactless transactions more than trebling in the past year in the UK.”
Mastercard’s president for UK & Ireland, Mark Barnett, said:
“The pace of growth we are seeing in contactless is getting ever faster as we rely less and less on cash… We expect this upward trend to persist with consumers continuing to migrate to contactless card payments and increasingly to mobile payments, as we work with partners such as Apple to enable more convenient ways to pay.”
The UK Cards Association added that despite a pin not being required, contactless results in 10 times less fraud losses than all card forms put together at 0.7p in every £100 spent.