Visa Contactless Payments Increase By 250 Percent In One Year

New figures from Visa Europe show the volume of contactless transactions, which can be made for purchases up to the value of £30, made by its customers in the UK grew by 250 percent last year.

Overall, contactless now accounts for one in every seven Visa transactions, up from just one in 25 a year ago, as mobile services such as Apple Pay help encourage more and more consumers to embrace the technology.

‘New normal’

London’s TfL travel network was Visa’s biggest contactless merchant during 2015, accounting for more than one million transactions every day.

Away from the capital,, the company has seen supermarkets become a major driver for the adoption of contactless, as 60 percent of these transactions now occur outside London, making the UK one of the leading European markets for contactless payments.

“In the UK, contactless has become the ‘new normal’,” said Visa UK and Ireland managing director Kevin Jenkins, noting that almost 460,000 terminals across the UK now support contactless and mobile payments, with all new systems set to support it as standard.

“The UK has always been a global-pace setter for payments. The accelerated shift to electronic payments is shaping the future of commerce, bringing tangible benefits to retailers enabling them to grow their businesses and to consumers by enabling them to pay where and when they choose, and on any device.”

The report came as Visa announced strong overall growth across Europe and the UK, where point-of-sale spend rose 9.6 percent during 2015 as the number of transactions in the country grow 11.5 percent. More than £1 in every £3 spent in the UK done so with a Visa card

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