personal finance

UK in-store contactless payments overtake chip and pin – Worldpay


Contactless payments are now more popular than chip and pin card transactions when people pay in UK stores, according to the payments technology company Worldpay.

The company, which processes payments for large retailers as well as small businesses, said it was the first time it had seen “tap and go” contactless payments overtake chip and pin.

The switchover happened in June, according to Worldpay, which said 51% of in-store card transactions in that month were contactless, rising further to 52% in July.

Contactless usage jumped by around 30% in stores between June 2017 and June 2018, according to Worldpay’s analysis of its data.

The popularity of contactless has surged in recent years following increases to spending limits as well as a rapid expansion in places where such payments can be used. The current limit for single contactless card transactions is £30.

Worldpay said fashion retailers have had a particularly big shift from chip and pin to contactless. Betting shops and department stores have had significant increases in mobile contactless payments, it said.

The company said that looking across the UK there had also been a particularly big jump in people making contactless payments using both cards and their mobile phones in Northern Ireland.

Steve Newton, an executive vice-president at Worldpay, said: “The rise of contactless is part of a bigger story: it’s not simply about tap and go – it’s about convenience and reducing the parts of the shopping experience that customers find irritating, like queuing and waiting to pay.”

Worldpay processes more than 40bn transactions annually across 146 countries.

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It was the UK’s largest payment processing company before agreeing to a £9.3bn takeover by US rival Vantiv last year. The combined group was renamed Worldpay and has its headquarters in Cincinnati, where Vantiv was based.

At the time of the deal in 2017, Worldpay’s chairman, Sir Mike Rake, said the pound’s slump since the Brexit vote had “killed” the company’s hopes of leading global consolidation in the fast-growing electronic payments sector.

Card payments – both contactless and chip and pin – overtook cash transactions to account for more than half of all UK retail purchases for the first time last year, according to British Retail Consortium figures.

For years, cards have accounted for the majority of retail spending by value but 2016 was the first year they also accounted for more than 50% of all transactions.



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