News from the Wire

Mercator reports uptick in European contactless payments

Tuesday, October 06, 2015 — 14:37:35 (EDT)

Boston, Oct. 6, 2015 – Hiding in plain sight, contactless payment technology has been around for many years. Its primary use case was in the transit context, where consumers could purchase and reload “smart” or chip cards and tap them against readers as to pay their fares. In London, the city’s popular Oyster card is a prominent international examples of contactless payment card. It was not until 2014 that contactless cards emerged outside of the historical transit use case, however.

Mercator Advisory Group’s latest research report, 2015 European Contactless Card Payments Landscape,seeks to provide a better understanding of the European contactless card payment landscape by examining a number of critical factors, including the number of Visa, MasterCard, and American Express branded contactless debit and credit cards available across Europe, the number of contactless-enabled point-of-sale (POS) terminals, and more specifically developments in leading European contactless payment markets like the United Kingdom. In addition, this report considers the implications for the development of European mobile payment systems based on the growing popularity of contactless payment cards.

“Contactless payments have dominated European payments headlines for the better part of a year now and for good reason. A technology that has been sitting in plain sight has finally come good and consumers across Europe (but mainly in a few countries) are increasingly using their newly issued contactless card for more and more of their general spending,” comments Tristan Hugo-Webb, Associate Director, Global Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group and primary author of the report.

Highlights of the report include:

• Overview of contactless payment technology and the different advantages it brings to different sections of the payments value chain

• Estimates of the number of contactless-enabled debit and credit cards cobranded by Visa, MasterCard, and American Express across Europe between 2011 and 2015

• Estimates of the number of contactless-enabled POS terminals able to accept at least Visa and MasterCard across Europe between 2011 and 2015

This report contains 23 pages and 10 exhibits.

Companies mentioned in this report include: Visa Europe, MasterCard, American Express, and Cartes Bancaires.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group’s Global Payments Advisory Servicehave access to these reports as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access, and other membership benefits. Please visit us online at www.mercatoradvisorygroup.com .

For more information and media inquiries, please call Mercator Advisory Group's main line: (781) 419-1700, send e-mail to info@mercatoradvisorygroup.com . For free industry news, opinions, research, company information and more visit us at www.PaymentsJournal.com . Follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/MercatorAdvisor .

About Mercator Advisory Group: Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors. Mercator Advisory Group is also the publisher of the online payments and banking news and information portal PaymentsJournal.com .

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Source: Company press release.