Contactless cards account for 16 per cent of face-to-face transactions in December 2021: Visa

MUMBAI: The share of contactless cards, which help a customer pay at a merchant by tapping the card on a device, grew to 16 per cent in December 2021, global payments major Visa said on Thursday.

The number of usage of contactless cards during face-to-face transactions at merchants' end was less than 2.5 per cent in December 2018, the company, which commands a big share of the market, said.

It can be noted that the RBI regulations now allow users to pay up to Rs 5,000 per transaction through the contactless alternative, which does not require a four-digit PIN code.

The maximum limit has been capped keeping security concerns in mind, wherein just the presence of a card can result in losses to the user.

Visa's head of products and solutions for India and South Asia Ramakrishnan Gopalan said that availability, convenience, utility, and security are the key drivers of growth in contactless cards.

The report done in association with payments processing company Worldline India said the highest adoption of contactless payments was observed in sectors like quick-service restaurants, pharmacies, food, grocery, etc., which accelerated with the impact of the pandemic.

In supermarkets, a fourth of the overall transactions were done using contactless cards in January 2020, which has increased to 31 per cent in January 2022, it added.

Delhi-NCR, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Telangana had the highest proportion of contactless transactions and penetration, across debit and credit cards in 2020 and 2021, the report said.

"Coupled with the increasing merchant acceptance of contactless cards, we are seeing not only in metro cities but in non-metro cities as well, we anticipate contactless payments to be a key driver of digital payments in the future," Worldline's senior vice president Sunil Rongala said.