Already adopted by a large part of the population, contactless payment by bank card will soon become even more practical with this welcome change.
Everyday payment methods have been modernized and digitized at high speed in recent years. While payment by smartphone or smartwatch is the latest consumer innovation, good old bank cards have also evolved and adapted, with the democratization of contactless payment. Introduced in 2012, this payment method really took off in 2020, during the covid-19 pandemic and the health measures that accompanied it.
Contactless payment is now widely adopted and appreciated by French consumers. So much so that, according to the Banque de France, 60% of transactions carried out by bank card at a merchant in 2022 were carried out without contact, for an average purchase amount of 16 euros. The practice has therefore become common, in part thanks to successive increases in payment ceilings: from 20 euros at its launch, the maximum amount payable without contact was increased to 30 euros in 2017, then to 50 euros during the health crisis in 2020.
And this ceiling will evolve further in 2024, to disappear completely. The Cartes Bancaires Group, which operates transactions for cards bearing the famous “CB” logo, is launching the “Contactless Plus” system, which once deployed will allow payment by contactless bank card and without limit of amount, therefore beyond of the ceiling of 50 euros currently in force. As a security measure, however, it will be necessary to enter the PIN code of your bank card on the payment terminal to validate the transaction.
Compared to a classic card payment of more than 50 euros, the only difference is that it will no longer be necessary to insert and hold your card in the electronic payment terminal while entering the PIN. The handling should therefore be a little faster, but will not be as convenient as true contactless payment without a PIN.
For buyers, there is no specific action to take to benefit from “Contactless Plus” payment; the function will be activated by their bank if their card is already compatible with classic contactless. On the sellers’ side, however, an update of electronic payment terminals will be necessary to accept contactless payments of more than 50 euros. The deployment of this new payment method will therefore be gradual among the various merchants.