Contactless payments are now more popular than chip and pin card transactions in the UK.
New data from payment processing company, Worldpay, found that 51% of in-store card transactions were contactless, which rose to 52% in July.
This is the first time that contactless payments have been more popular than chip and pin transactions.
“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,” said Steve Newton, an executive vice-president at Worldpay.
British Retail Consortium figures showed that last year, contactless and chip and pin transactions overtook cash payments to account for over half of all UK retail purchases for the first time.
Contactless payments over the UK and Ireland have jumped, with people using cards and mobile phones to pay.
Worldpay processes over 40 billion transactions annually across 146 countries.
The current limit for single contactless card transactions is £30.
Niro Sivanathan, a London Business School professor, recently claimed that parting with cash is “psychologically painful”, whereas paying for items with a contactless card “anaesthetises the psychological pain that accompanies payment, seducing us into splashing out”.