Mastercard has established a six-year time frame for all European merchants using Mastercard and Maestro to implement contactless payment as standard.
The measures will ensure that consumers will be able to pay with their contactless cards and NFC enabled devices at all point-of-sale (POS) terminals in Europe by 2020.
A contactless study by PRIME Research confirmed that consumers enjoy the convenience of contactless payments and expect merchants to catch up with the technology. The top countries in Europe where consumers are eager to adopt contactless payments and integrate them in their daily routines are the UK, Poland, Russia, Italy, Hungary and France.
“Europeans can aContactless Mobile Paymentslready use contactless cards or NFC enabled mobile payments in 36 countries across Europe and their enthusiasm for this safe and simple way to pay is evident,” said Javier Perez, President of MasterCard Europe. “NFC-enabled cell phone shipments are to soar fourfold in the next five years according to IHS Technology. MasterCard wants to ensure that mobile and contactless payments are safe and simple wherever you are in Europe making it easy to pay how you want when you want.”
MasterCard is setting compliance dates that allow sufficient time to absorb the normal lifecycle of existing terminals. Existing POS terminals can be replaced at end of their lifecycle, by the latest by 1 January 2020. New POS terminals must adhere to the new standard upon deployment as from 1 January 2016.
Source: Mastercard
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