MARLBOROUGH, Mass—Mercator is estimating that Visa, the brand on 72% of U.S. debit cards, now has 93 million contactless debit cards in the United States.
Contactless debit will increase as the big banks put more contactless cards in the market and as smaller financial institutions prioritize the investment, a move the pandemic is driving forward.
When the EMV liability shift kicked off in 2015, the EMV upgrade included contactless enablement; however, many merchants didn’t turn the feature on at the time, noted Payments Journal.
Now Visa reports 80 of the largest 100 merchants accept contactless cards, resulting in over 60% of in-person card transactions taking place at a contactless-enabled merchant, Payments Journal explained.