An upbeat message on the progress of contactless payments in the
US emerged from industry body the Smart Card Alliance’s first
annual Payments Councils Summit held in late February. Indicative
of progress, Mohammad Khan, president of contactless payments
technology vendor VivoTech, told delegates that 35 million
contactless financial payment cards, branded with MasterCard
PayPass, Visa payWave or American Express ExpressPay, have now been
issued and that more than 400,000 readers are in place at 80,000
merchant locations.
The momentum is not expected to slow, said another speaker,
Didier Serra, GM of the Americas for French smart card
microprocessor developer Inside Contactless, who forecast that
contactless financial payment cards in issue in the US would grow
to between 50 and 60 million in 2008.
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A study in which merchants had been asked to cite benefits of
accepting contactless payments was presented by payment processor
First Data’s vice-president of enterprise payments, Wendy Humphrey.
According to her, 51 percent of merchants named faster checkout and
increased throughput at the POS, 46 percent named the ability to
support customer preference for the payment option, and 25 percent
named being ready for future payment solutions such as mobile
phones equipped with contactless payments functionality.
A key discussion point at the summit was progress of contactless
payments in the public transport sector.
Pilot programmes under way
One good news story was that of a pilot project in the host city
for the summit, Salt Lake City, undertaken by the Utah Transit
Authority (UTA). The project’s manager, Craig Roberts, announced
that the pilot had been completed successfully and that the UTA
would proceed with full deployment of contactless fare payment.
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By GlobalDataHe added that acceptance of all major brands of contactless
financial payment cards would be extended to regular buses, ski
service buses and the city’s light and commuter rail lines.
Other contactless transit payments projects are in progress in
Washington DC, Baltimore, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles,
Chicago, San Diego, Seattle, Minneapolis, Houston, Boston, New
York, Atlanta, Philadelphia and, in Canada, Toronto.
