Contactless payments reach 'watershed moment' - Visa Europe

A watershed moment may occur when the contactless transactions reach more than 1% of all card payment transactions. What is that  propotion today? Where are the contactless cards used - in environments new to cards or in stores that already accepted chip + pin? What are the benefits for the latter merchants and for the banking community? What new payment volumes and revenues does the contactless card bring and what is the cost to implement it? New cards, new terminals, new central systems, back office impact, marketing, education of users...and do we really want to make all our payments without cardholder verification? And if not - when do we do chip + pin and when the contactless? It is still early days for contactless.

The total number of card transactions in Europe is currently about 40 billion a year, so a contactless volume of 19 million per month represents about a 0.5% share of the total which is less than your criterion of 1%.  Still, that's a very healthy rate of growth and a lot more than a couple of years ago.  For the first time I'm beginning to think contactless may be getting traction.

19 million is 0.05% of 40 billion

Per Visa Europe's annual report (http://annualreport.visaeurope.com/pdf/visa_europe_2012.pdf) POS transactions = 24bn in 2012; it's an approximation because of seasonality, but let's say that is 2bn / month or thereabouts. 

19m is just under 1% of 2bn.

The 40 billion was per year, and covered all brands, while the 19 million is per month, and may or may not be only Visa transactions.  So the market share of contactless is somewhere around between 0.5% and 1%. 

It's precisely 0.57% but contactless as a % of *all card* transactions is somewhat misleading since contactless can be used only up to a certain max transaction size in most parts of Europe. A more valid metric would be contactless as a % of *eligible card* transactions and, to me, 10% or more would signify a watershed moment. An even more revealing metric would be contactless as a % of *eligible cash* transactions.