Visa Europe expectes big year for contactless, NFC
20 January, 2012
category: Contactless, NFC
Visa Europe is anticipating a big year for contactless and NFC payments, with issuance projected to leap from 30 million in 2011 to 50 million in 2012.
2012 will also see the launch the company’s first NFC-enabled mobile payments services, along with the debut of its new e-commerce digital wallet service in the latter half of the year.
According to Visa, €1 in every €7 spent in Europe last year came via Visa credit and debit cards, accounting for 14% growth overall in spending over 2010. The company also processed nearly one billion transactions every month in 2011, registering a 19% year-on-year growth.
“We expect this growth in electronic payments to continue during 2012 when we will be launching mobile payments and our digital wallet services,” said Peter Ayliffe, CEO of Visa Europe. “These new services, that are a key part of our future of payments strategy, will revolutionize consumers’ everyday shopping experience to the extent that by 2020 we predict that over half of all Visa transactions in Europe will be on a mobile device.”
Visa Europe also posted record lows in card fraud during 2011, with the fraud to sales ratio falling by 27% to 0.038%, or less than four cents in every €100 spent. Visa attributes the lion’s share of this success to the security of EMV chip technology, which is used on more than 75% of all Visa cards in Europe.