UK shoppers biggest adopters of contactless payment in Europe

British consumers spent more than 330 million euros in March alone using contactless cards, according to new data from Visa, making them the biggest adopters of contactless payments in Europe.

In the 12 months to March 2015, the number of contactless cards in circulation grew by more than 37 percent in the UK alone, where there are around 49.6 million cards and 410,000 terminals in use. Visa states that this accelerated growth has been helps along by the roll-out of contactless payments on all Transport for London services.

Following the UK in the league table of issued cards is France, where there are 20.3 million cards and 405,000 terminals, followed by Poland with 14.5 million cards and 354,000 terminals, while Spain tops the league table with the most number of terminals as it has 593,000 but has only issued 11.5 million cards.

The figures also reveal the uptake of contactless payments in Europe as a whole is continuing to increase, with more than 1 billion transactions have been made by Visa cardholders in the last 12 months, totalling more than 12.6 billion euros. During the month of March, Visa cardholders spent 1.6 billion euros, a three-fold increase on the same period in 2014.

Executive director of core products at Visa Europe, Sandra Alzetta said: “The popularity of contactless will only increase in future as we experience the next generation of digital payments, where the simplicity and convenience is extended to mobile and wearable NFC technology [which enables smartphones and other devices to establish radio communication with each other by bringing them together].”

Visa has stated that by 2020 all of its point-of-sale terminals in Europe will accept contactless payments.