The card companies are desperate to show that consumers are embracing contactless payments. These latest figures do show the habit is growing, but it’s still a niche activity.
UK spend for 2013 was over £618 million, with £82 million being spent in December alone.
The number of purchases in Europe in 2013 was 340.1m, with Poland leading the charge.
Here are the top countries:
· Poland (158.7 million purchases)
· UK (94.3 million purchases)
· Czech Republic (30.6 million purchases)
· Slovakia (23.1 million purchases)
· Spain (17.5 million purchases)
There are now 32.1m Visa contactless cards in circulation in the UK, and 80.6m in Europe.
The average UK purchase value in 2013 was £6.09.
The number of contactless terminals nearly doubled in the UK to 300,000 in 2013, with M&S, Waitrose, Starbucks, Costa, Co-Op, Lidl, McDonalds and Boots all supporting the tech.
Visa didn’t give out any stats on mobile contactless payments. We can assume they are the equivalent of a rounding error at the moment.