Rise in contactless payments shows people's movement away from cash

There has been a 44% rise year on year in the number of contactless payments being made, according to today's Banking and Payments Federation Ireland's Payment Monitor.

It also shows consumers made almost 1.5 million contactless payments a day in Quarter three of 2019.

Irish Banking and Payments Federation CEO, Brian Hayes, said we are moving more to cashless transactions:

Mr Hayes said: "We're increasingly becoming a non-cash society, even though cash payments are also up which is an example of the growing economy and the larger number of people within the economy.

"But if you look at the movement within many, many western countries in the last number of years, it's away from cash and towards contactless payments."

Mr Hayes, says contactless payments are low in value but the limits will go up.

He said: "People go about their business and use smaller transactions and contactless payments. Over a period of time that will change, it's already changing and I think as people get more used to the contactless payments system and more confident in the strong customer authentication underlying it, people will actually use more payments and the limits will grow."