New Zealanders completed one million transactions via its contactless payment enabled credit cards for the first time in one month during October, Visa says.
Visa is hailing this as a significant milestone in the establishment of its payWave contactless payment technology, which was launched in August 2011.
“Breaking the one million milestone in a single month shows contactless payments are becoming an increasingly preferred form of payment in New Zealand," says Caroline Ada, Visa's country manager for New Zealand and the South Pacific. "It tells us Kiwis are embracing this faster and more convenient way to pay over cash."
“More than 1.5 million Visa payWave cards have been issued by our bank and credit union partners in New Zealand and we expect this to grow in the coming months,” she says.
To give some broader context Paymark, which processes about 75% of New Zealand electronic transactions, recorded 85.82 million in October.
Visa says fast food restaurants Subway and Burger King are the latest merchants to adopt contactless payment technology, meaning about 12,000 contactless terminals are now in use. Those using them include BP, Z Energy, Farmers, Glassons, and the Warehouse.
Rival MasterCard also has credit cards that enable contactless payments via its PayPass technology, whereby consumers hold their credit card in front of a contactless terminal in order to pay.
The rollout of contactless payments technology has led to safety concerns with media coverage highlighting some problems. However, Ada says payWave cards are as secure as chip cards and meet all the same standards.
"In addition, with Visa payWave, the card never leaves the cardholder’s hand, also reducing the risk of fraud."
Visa is working with BNZ and Vodafone on a mobile wallet trial based around contactless payments.
Also see the video interview with Ada here where she discusses how the uptake of contactless payments technology compares to the take up of chip cards, safety concerns and progress of the mobile wallet project.
4 Comments
“Breaking the one million milestone in a single month shows contactless payments are becoming an increasingly preferred form of payment in New Zealand,"
How many of those were made inadvertenly? :-)
"In addition, with Visa payWave, the card never leaves the cardholder’s hand, also reducing the risk of fraud."
If someone can fraudulently access the card while it's in your hand (or pocket) that statement doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
While transactions are only supposed to take place within a few centimeters of the terminal, anecdotal evidence suggests much larger ranges are possible. IMO NFC (near field communication) security is far too shakey to trust at this point. How to get around it is a problem though as it seems all new credit cards made have NFC built in and there is no way to opt out.
If I use my debit card by inserting and picking my chq account, the merchant gets the total value of the tranasction, if I use paypass or paywave the transaction is then routed through the M/C or Visa switch then the merchant pays a fee to M/C or Visa.
M/C & Visa are no slouches, with the move away from credit cards towards towards debit cards these companies need to create new revenue streams as old ones achieve maturity and as non M/C & Visa debit cards started proliferating.
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