Barclaycard’s data reveals nine in ten transactions made using contactless tech in 2020

By Megha Bhattacharya

Barclaycard’s new data has revealed that contactless technology accounted for 88.6% of all eligible card transactions in 2020. Contactless payments allow consumers to pay without touching card terminals or handling cash, it also helps reduce the volume of people in stores by reducing queue times. Contactless transactions are, on average, seven seconds faster than Chip and PIN, and 15 seconds faster than cash. Barclaycard stated that the total volume of contactless payments fell by 11.8% compared to 2019, while the total transaction value actually rose by 7.0%.

Raheel Ahmed, Head of Consumer Products said, “We are proud to be playing our part in helping to prevent the spread of coronavirus, and we are delighted to see that even more Brits are relying on contactless to make in-store payments. We believe that contactless is the safer, faster, and most responsible way to pay in-store, and we encourage all consumers to take advantage of it wherever possible.”

The study also revealed that grocery stores saw significant growth in contactless users, with payments up 29.4% year-on-year, with the sector benefitting from the £45 limit enabling more cardholders to pay for their shop using the technology. 2020 saw the biggest day for contactless on 19 December, the last Saturday before Christmas, which saw 71.9% more contactless spend than the daily average for the year, likely due to people out buying last-minute Christmas presents. Contactless users made an average of 141 payments in 2020, worth a total of £1,640 and over-65s were most likely to embrace the technology for the first time in 2020.

Recently, Barclaycard Payments announced that it has seen a 29% jump in the value of online transactions this month as compared to November 2019. The company also noticed that overall transactions have remained 7% below as compared to last year. This development could be attributed to the drop in in-store sales.