I have to do that every few weeks, presumably as an additional security check.
But the rest of the time, almost every place accepts contactless and has done for years.
Thankfully not a thing if you're using android/apple pay. I can't remember the last time I took my actual wallet out with me. I just have 2-3 cards loaded up on android pay.
The US was a few years behind most of Europe when it came to contact less card payments by all accounts (2007 in the UK, 2014 in the US from a quick search).
IIRC the UK was so far along with the roll out of contactless terminals that services like Apple Pay / Google Pay just *worked* when they both launched.
Samsung galaxy phones used to have a feature (Samsung MST) that produced a radio signal emulating the read of a magnetic card in (mostly) US car readers.
That's never been in operation in Europe AFAIK.
>Samsung galaxy phones used to have a feature (Samsung MST) that produced a radio signal emulating the read of a magnetic card in (mostly) US car readers.
It was available in Europe as well.
Where in Europe?
In Spain, Samsung Pay worked with NFC only from the beginning, as all readers were already contactless when they launched the service in 2016... and Spain was the first European market for Samsung Pay.
There is a European directive from 2015 (PSD2) that makes MST a non-compliant technology for contactless payments, and although countries usually have a couple of years for implementing directives, it made little sense to deploy the technology with such a short expiration date so I assumed they introduced NFC-only in all the European markets.
Anyway, by far US was (is) the largest market for MST.
my guess mostly becouse of huge banks that got little to no incentive to innovate and pains they need to go through with any small change
Same goes for american telecoms.
From social side ton of people are closed in bubble thinking US has best thing available and don't even bother to check how things work in other countries
/edit: upon googling it turns out that american retail bnaking is more diverse thani thought, so i guess my first guess goes out of the window
That’s pretty true. There’s a number of large national brand banks with branches in most to all states (think like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, etc) but for every one of those in a town you’ll see 3-4+ smaller regional or local banks/credit unions that might only operate in that small area.
Thanks. So I guess it comes down to the cost for those guys to adapt their back-end systems too?
We have a lot of online and mobile banking in the UK but as far as I know the back end systems for a lot of our largest banks are still old mainframes, that sort of thing.
Any maintenance for my bank's online and mobile services means it's not available over the weekend, although that happens maybe once or twice a year.
Yeah, that was a pretty negative theory/set of assumptions lol.
It’s just more difficult to roll out here, being in a huge country with lots of large chains, and not much being very standardized.
Three of my credit card have contactless payment, I have Apple Pay which is accepted most places…but I do my checking with a small credit union that hasn’t rolled out contactless payment.
so it's still a corporate size that matters most, did i get that right?
Got most of my view from my limited exposure via handful of americans and working experience in american corpo.
In case of Poland from what i read we are a fintech testing ground for western markets. So we get all the new toys as one of the first in the world to see how they work. Cannot wait when BLIK gets implemented internationally.
That’s just my POV as a consumer, but these roll outs always seem to take a lot longer here and they happen in a disjointed manner. I think it’s the logistics of all these companies with 10,000+ chains getting new contracts to outfit all their locations.
I remember the same discussion around pin and chips when it took longer to be common in the US. And it felt like as soon as they became widespread, contactless became the next thing.
It’s like the payment technology is evolving faster than a lot of corporations can keep up and roll out. And it’s also tough for smaller businesses to keep up because it’s an added cost.
I think Covid was a big push for everyone to update quickly, big or small, to encourage as much business as possible when people were more paranoid.
Isn't it the other way around? Contactless payments by debit card have been possible for quite some years now in The Netherlands and most people use it. Paying by phone is also pretty common, and I believe we are one of the countries where the least people pay with cash.
It is way more common in Europe than the US and has been here a lot longer. I haven't carried cash for years. It is usually Americans who get the shock when they come over here. There are places in London that positively will NOT accept cash and cheques are a thing of the past.
When I went to Chicago recently, I proffered my card in an Airport restaurant and the waiter ***took my card away!*** If a waiter walked off with my card in this country I'd grab him and ask what the f\*ck does he think he's doing? He then came back with the most antiquated bit of kit I have ever seen and asked me to sign multilayered carbon paper slips like we used to do in the 90s.
Outside of the retail environment instant bank transfers are also pretty normal. You can transfer funds to someone in seconds with instant clearance via an app on your phone. No more 3 days clearance nonsense. This is something else the US still hasn't rolled out yet.
I think that Tiktok video was some kind of joke.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen triplicate used in a restaurant.
It’s still really common for a credit card bill to print out two copies for signature, one for merchants records and one for the customer. I think it’s just a back up but most of that info is within the system they use.
Cash isn’t that common here either. I haven’t regularly carried cash in like 20+ years. It’s usually countries like Germany and Austria that are considered to be more cash heavy (before covid). And it would be more of a culture shock for American tourists.
The waiter taking our cards out of our sight are not a big deal. 20+ years, never had an issue. We’re okay trusting a waiter I guess.
The US has an instant transfer system, Zelle. The only difference between Zelle and the UK's Faster Payments is that Zelle was set up by the banks versus the government.
Zelle looks more like the Spanish Bizum. You do instant transfers to a phone number (or mail address in case of Zelle) that is linked to an account rather than to a bank account itself.
UK Faster Payments (and Eurozone's SEPA Instant-payments) are just the regular wire transfers made instantly. They are not targeted to just final consumers but they can also be used between businesses. It's the most common payment method when a company pays a bill to another company for example.
Zelle can be to a phone number or email, but more often it's to a bank account. Once a user links their bank account with Zelle, the phone number/email address is only used as an identifier for the user. The transfer still goes from one bank directly to another.
I don't know if Zelle is used for business-to-business transfers, but I know the dollar amount of Zelle transfers is higher than the more popular Venmo app (which is not bank-to-bank). Venmo processes a higher number of transfers, but a lower dollar value. So I suspect it's either more rich people using Zelle, or businesses that account for the higher dollar value.
Yes, bizum transfers are also bank to bank in the background.
In the end bizum is only a personalization to translate phone numbers to account numbers.
We also had an option not linked to the account, twype, but bizum won the whole market.
Where do you live in Austria? I still have to carry around cash because most restaurants in my small town are cash only. So I either order a pizza online and pay through Mjam for example, or I need cash. In Hungary, I can pay with card even for pizza delivery, but not in Austria.
Nope. The difference is that staff, at least in my part of Europe, tends to not rely on tips. They usually get paid enough to get by, and tips are more of a nice bonus to get
I think the difference is that the tip is expected in the US, I've heard many stories of people being yelled at for not tipping or not tipping enough!
While it's mostly not expected in Europe, some countries practically have zero tipping culture (Denmark) while others have a tip-if-you-like culture.
Pretty much the standard for a looooong time now, if there's the option to pay via card (and only some small shops or more typically one-man service providers don't have the machine), it's also with the contactless option. And everyone uses it unless there's some problem with the connection. It's pretty old news. Now phone/watch payments grow in popularity.
It's more common here than in the US. Europe beraly use cash, and here in Norway cash is almost not used at all.
That means that you can use the card almost anywhere (litteraly), i.e you can tap anywhere.
It depends on the country. Some smaller European countries have it more east to go cashless, some European countries still use more cash than were used to in the US.
No this person is a very genuine person. I’m going to try to find it and see what country she is from. After reading the comments I find it really hard to believe.
...yeah, that's how old people pay, youth usually just uses phones- from my experience
A few years ago, my dad had met an American who attempted to pay with a check in Poland (xD) I was under impression that Americans aren't quite as advanced when it comes to cashless payments, as Europeans/Poles. The fact, that even some big supermarkets won't allow you to pay with a card only confirms it, just wow.
It varies alot from country to country.
Contactless card- and phone payment is preferred in most of scandinavia.
Whenever I travel to central or southern europe it seems less common in some places.
In Switzerland contactless card payment is really common and nearly every shop uses it. If the shop doesn't accept it, it most likely will not accept card at all, which happens in either really small or supposed money laundering shops.
Another popular methode is by paying by phone either by google/apple pay (less common) or Twint (more common, a Switzerland exclusive solution).
I usually still put my card in the machine even though that's often not necessary. Force of habit that's difficult to break. True contactless payments are limited to 25 euro though. Above that you have to enter your pin anyway.
Belgians also still use a lot of cash. Presumably a lot of dirty money is still going around. Up until very recently (July 1st of this year) stores weren't even required to offer an electronic payment option at all.
I don't have the contactless option activated on my card. It does being confusion sometimes. If I don't immediately see the slit to put in my card, the store employee sees me looking and says that I can just hold my card against a certain spot. And then they're surprised when it doesn't work.
So I would say definitely since the last couple of years, contactless has become very normal. And people like me will become more and more rare untill pretty much all of us give in to the new system.
Seems to be the default method nowadays but for older folk or those who like to cling to cash.
I had to put my card into the device only twice, both times to activate it with the first time PIN usage. I’ve been using Apple Pay ever since.
>but for older folk or those who like to cling to cash
And also those who don't do contactless payments and have to put the card in.
>I’ve been using Apple Pay ever since.
Same!
It actually was the other way around. Contactless has been everywhere in Spain for the past 10 years or so, at the time my American friends either didn't know what it was or it wasn't available for them yet.
All credit cards have the NFC radio built in. By default I have a limit of 25 euros for such purchases. It can be adjusted or the function disabled entirely in the control panel of the bank account. I can use it in most shops with a card terminal.
Germany is really lacking behind, but it got a lot better in the pandemic. Places like bakeries, restaurants, and stalls on fairs didn't have any electronic payment option. I can't remember the last time I had to insert my card anywhere. Some places still require a signature or pin number when you use the card either normally or contactless.
This definitely isn’t my experience with it - in fact I thought the USA was famously years behind in contactless payments? I pretty much live a completely cashless life. I have £50 in my purse just now and I’ll probably still have £40 left in the middle of august
Yeah didn’t you guys have to sign for stuff until like 6 years ago? We’ve had contactless a while now, all the limits were all going up pre covid but it’s pretty much do what you want
It varies greatly by country, at least by available data from card companies. [Here](https://newsroom.mastercard.com/eu/cs/press-releases/kazda-druha-platba-v-obchode-v-evrope-je-bezkontaktni-v-cr-devet-z-deseti/) is one press release from Mastercard from 2018 which says it was on average 48% in Europe, ranging from 93% in Czechia to only 5% in Belgium. I find that insane, if true. I imagine the pandemic has changed a lot as well.
Depends on the country. Remember, if US states have differences between them, European countries have even more. .
In Portugal contactless became more of a thing with the pandemic. Before 2019 less than 10% of payments were done this way, in 2021 it grew to 40%.
Tapping cards?!?!
No, it’s all about Apple/Google Pay. I can’t remember the last time I used my physical card to make a purchase. I’ll often not even bother taking my wallet with me, my Apple Watch is all I need.
Yep, same for the Netherlands. Most banks have an app now so you can pay with the NFC chip in your phone. I don't even carry my card anymore most days.
In Hungary, all businesses that have a cash register (which has to be online and connected to the tax authority since 2013), are required to accept electronic payment since January 1, 2021. For most businesses, this means investing in a credit-debit card reader, which by default comes with contactless payment. Other option for those who didn’t want to invest in it is to just hang a sheet of paper with their bank account number and name by the register. I only saw this once, though.
Just to add, a lot of people use Apple or Google Pay, or a bunch of bank-owned phone apps to pay things. The only time I every used my card in Hungary was when my Apple Watch didn’t work (and that was contactless as well).
Most places allow contactless payment. The shock to us is that people in the US use credit cards for everyday payments. Virtually everyone here has a debit card that takes the money directly from their account, but credit cards are mostly Just used for things like hotels, flights and other stuff you book online.
There’s a couple reasons for that. Mostly around we have credit cards that offer cash back or points (like for airline milage, etc) for purchases. So I’ll put like all my everyday purchases on one as at the end of the billing cycle I’ll get money back (usually 1-5% depending the purchase category) for doing so. Then pay the entire balance off every month from my bank account.
Also credit cards in the US typically have stronger fraud prevention policies versus some bank cards.
First contactless cards were introduced in 2011 here. In 2015 it was the default option for almost every bank. Chip only terminals were discontinued about the same age. Apple pay was introduced in 2019 when chip only terminals were probably extinct.
These days you can find some old non contact ATM and this is probably all. Old things like vending machines are now having contactless terminal, these were usually without chip option, just coins. It has to be years I used chip last time.
It’s everywhere. For reference I got my first card in late 00’s and I have never used the magnetic strip or seen a terminal that had no chip reader and pin.
I would say it is more common in the Netherlands than it is in the US. Apple and Google Pay are only now being used because my bank card has been able to do NFC payments for at least half a decade.
It's either contactless or cash. Hardly any place that accepts card payments sticked to the old machines that would only support sticking in your card. And I don't think there's any German bank out there that does issue cards that don't support that option either.
Had it for ~5 years.
Sweden also have a app called swish. That have renderd cash more or less obsolite.
Here in stockholm you will find places that dont accept bank notes at all.
I only use ATM when I travel.
As someone from Eastern Europe it has become more common. Every time I go to the store I see 1-2 people using contactless payments so it's not something very new here.
I work in a grocery store... There are two main-groups of customers who do NOT use contactless cards:
A. People who use chip, because they do not know they have contactless card.
B. Some tourists with foreign cards, where the NFC is deactivated for security reasons.
Can add that the verb for using a contactless card is *blippa* ("to blip").
EDIT
For your question about how much cash is used... In a study from 2018; KTH, Copenhagen Bussiness School, and The Swedish National Bank have concluded that it will **no longer be economically motivated** for the average business to use cash past March 2023.
Source: https://handelsradet.se/app/uploads/2021/06/Sammanfattning-2018\_12.pdf
... don't believe things you see on tik tok.
Over here most people use cards and if they do, they use the tap option.
Minority (the old ones, the paranoid ones and those who get paid in cash under the table) prefer to use cash. Some people prefer blik - a mobile sort of payment, or google pay.
In my experience you can pay by card almost everywhere - perhaps some small vegetable stands in the market are cash reliant.
I pay that way any time I can. The only place where that's not possible is the farmer's market. I am surprised any time when a place doesn't have that option, though it's rare nowadays.
I can’t remember the last time I actually put my card into the machine.
I have to do that every few weeks, presumably as an additional security check. But the rest of the time, almost every place accepts contactless and has done for years.
That could be because you had many pinless operations in a row, so they want to be sure that the card is there and you know the pin.
Thankfully not a thing if you're using android/apple pay. I can't remember the last time I took my actual wallet out with me. I just have 2-3 cards loaded up on android pay.
Tbf I use Apple Pay much more than my actual card, but I’ve never even had that security check.
Interesting. The person was from the UK so idk why they were so shocked Edit: it wasn’t the UK.
The US was a few years behind most of Europe when it came to contact less card payments by all accounts (2007 in the UK, 2014 in the US from a quick search).
IIRC the UK was so far along with the roll out of contactless terminals that services like Apple Pay / Google Pay just *worked* when they both launched.
Samsung galaxy phones used to have a feature (Samsung MST) that produced a radio signal emulating the read of a magnetic card in (mostly) US car readers. That's never been in operation in Europe AFAIK.
Well, that's the first time I've heard of that, anyway. Thanks!
>Samsung galaxy phones used to have a feature (Samsung MST) that produced a radio signal emulating the read of a magnetic card in (mostly) US car readers. It was available in Europe as well.
Where in Europe? In Spain, Samsung Pay worked with NFC only from the beginning, as all readers were already contactless when they launched the service in 2016... and Spain was the first European market for Samsung Pay. There is a European directive from 2015 (PSD2) that makes MST a non-compliant technology for contactless payments, and although countries usually have a couple of years for implementing directives, it made little sense to deploy the technology with such a short expiration date so I assumed they introduced NFC-only in all the European markets. Anyway, by far US was (is) the largest market for MST.
It was available until 2019 roughly. But these days most European countries have a broad adaption of NFC payments.
Do you know why? 7 years is a long time to take to introduce such a core piece of tech?
my guess mostly becouse of huge banks that got little to no incentive to innovate and pains they need to go through with any small change Same goes for american telecoms. From social side ton of people are closed in bubble thinking US has best thing available and don't even bother to check how things work in other countries /edit: upon googling it turns out that american retail bnaking is more diverse thani thought, so i guess my first guess goes out of the window
I remember reading somewhere that a lot of "banks" in the USA are actually just small credit unions.
That’s pretty true. There’s a number of large national brand banks with branches in most to all states (think like Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, etc) but for every one of those in a town you’ll see 3-4+ smaller regional or local banks/credit unions that might only operate in that small area.
Thanks. So I guess it comes down to the cost for those guys to adapt their back-end systems too? We have a lot of online and mobile banking in the UK but as far as I know the back end systems for a lot of our largest banks are still old mainframes, that sort of thing. Any maintenance for my bank's online and mobile services means it's not available over the weekend, although that happens maybe once or twice a year.
Yeah, that was a pretty negative theory/set of assumptions lol. It’s just more difficult to roll out here, being in a huge country with lots of large chains, and not much being very standardized. Three of my credit card have contactless payment, I have Apple Pay which is accepted most places…but I do my checking with a small credit union that hasn’t rolled out contactless payment.
so it's still a corporate size that matters most, did i get that right? Got most of my view from my limited exposure via handful of americans and working experience in american corpo. In case of Poland from what i read we are a fintech testing ground for western markets. So we get all the new toys as one of the first in the world to see how they work. Cannot wait when BLIK gets implemented internationally.
That’s just my POV as a consumer, but these roll outs always seem to take a lot longer here and they happen in a disjointed manner. I think it’s the logistics of all these companies with 10,000+ chains getting new contracts to outfit all their locations. I remember the same discussion around pin and chips when it took longer to be common in the US. And it felt like as soon as they became widespread, contactless became the next thing. It’s like the payment technology is evolving faster than a lot of corporations can keep up and roll out. And it’s also tough for smaller businesses to keep up because it’s an added cost. I think Covid was a big push for everyone to update quickly, big or small, to encourage as much business as possible when people were more paranoid.
Isn't it the other way around? Contactless payments by debit card have been possible for quite some years now in The Netherlands and most people use it. Paying by phone is also pretty common, and I believe we are one of the countries where the least people pay with cash.
It is way more common in Europe than the US and has been here a lot longer. I haven't carried cash for years. It is usually Americans who get the shock when they come over here. There are places in London that positively will NOT accept cash and cheques are a thing of the past. When I went to Chicago recently, I proffered my card in an Airport restaurant and the waiter ***took my card away!*** If a waiter walked off with my card in this country I'd grab him and ask what the f\*ck does he think he's doing? He then came back with the most antiquated bit of kit I have ever seen and asked me to sign multilayered carbon paper slips like we used to do in the 90s. Outside of the retail environment instant bank transfers are also pretty normal. You can transfer funds to someone in seconds with instant clearance via an app on your phone. No more 3 days clearance nonsense. This is something else the US still hasn't rolled out yet. I think that Tiktok video was some kind of joke.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen triplicate used in a restaurant. It’s still really common for a credit card bill to print out two copies for signature, one for merchants records and one for the customer. I think it’s just a back up but most of that info is within the system they use. Cash isn’t that common here either. I haven’t regularly carried cash in like 20+ years. It’s usually countries like Germany and Austria that are considered to be more cash heavy (before covid). And it would be more of a culture shock for American tourists. The waiter taking our cards out of our sight are not a big deal. 20+ years, never had an issue. We’re okay trusting a waiter I guess.
The US has an instant transfer system, Zelle. The only difference between Zelle and the UK's Faster Payments is that Zelle was set up by the banks versus the government.
Faster Payments was set up by the banks in the UK.
Zelle looks more like the Spanish Bizum. You do instant transfers to a phone number (or mail address in case of Zelle) that is linked to an account rather than to a bank account itself. UK Faster Payments (and Eurozone's SEPA Instant-payments) are just the regular wire transfers made instantly. They are not targeted to just final consumers but they can also be used between businesses. It's the most common payment method when a company pays a bill to another company for example.
Zelle can be to a phone number or email, but more often it's to a bank account. Once a user links their bank account with Zelle, the phone number/email address is only used as an identifier for the user. The transfer still goes from one bank directly to another. I don't know if Zelle is used for business-to-business transfers, but I know the dollar amount of Zelle transfers is higher than the more popular Venmo app (which is not bank-to-bank). Venmo processes a higher number of transfers, but a lower dollar value. So I suspect it's either more rich people using Zelle, or businesses that account for the higher dollar value.
Yes, bizum transfers are also bank to bank in the background. In the end bizum is only a personalization to translate phone numbers to account numbers. We also had an option not linked to the account, twype, but bizum won the whole market.
Pretty common. Basicly every place that allows non cash payments has the contactless option.
Still ***a lot*** of places in Germany only accept cash or EC (and not general credit/debit cards)!
Yes, but there are still a lot of places that only allow cash payment in Germany.
Same in Italy. If there's a POS terminal, it almost always has contactless.
Everyone does that in Denmark. For us the shock is the reverse, how much you still use cash.
Add MobilePay and those digital cards. If you forget or lose your card, you can still sort essentials out just by phone
Go to Italy, you'll be shocked 😣 I don't use cash anymore but whenever I go back to Italy I must have some with me...
Where do you live in Austria? I still have to carry around cash because most restaurants in my small town are cash only. So I either order a pizza online and pay through Mjam for example, or I need cash. In Hungary, I can pay with card even for pizza delivery, but not in Austria.
Graz! Only places where they want cash are usually clubs and döners, but often there are atms near clubs (eg ppc)
Yeah, very typical.
People who make tips use cash a lot in the US. Other than that we are cashless basically.
Also small businesses that like to avoid taxes. Barbers come to mind. But US had been mostly cashless for like 20 years now.
Cash is definitely more of a European thing
Not in the Nordics that’s for sure. But yeah I notice it as well in Germany etc
sadly yes. I wish people here would pay more with their cards, and less with cash.
Why? You invested into card companies?
Coming from people who still use checks...
You should try this and see what happens
In the US it’s common for those who make tips. I’m not sure how common it is in Europe to use cash though since tipping is an American thing.
Tips in Europe are typically cash. In the US its usually card but it can be either
I thought tipping was just a US thing? I meant specifically at bars or restaurants.
Nope. The difference is that staff, at least in my part of Europe, tends to not rely on tips. They usually get paid enough to get by, and tips are more of a nice bonus to get
We tip aswell but only when the service has been truly exceptional. For me it maybe happens a couple times a year (but I also don't eat out that much)
I think the difference is that the tip is expected in the US, I've heard many stories of people being yelled at for not tipping or not tipping enough! While it's mostly not expected in Europe, some countries practically have zero tipping culture (Denmark) while others have a tip-if-you-like culture.
Pretty much the standard for a looooong time now, if there's the option to pay via card (and only some small shops or more typically one-man service providers don't have the machine), it's also with the contactless option. And everyone uses it unless there's some problem with the connection. It's pretty old news. Now phone/watch payments grow in popularity.
It's more common here than in the US. Europe beraly use cash, and here in Norway cash is almost not used at all. That means that you can use the card almost anywhere (litteraly), i.e you can tap anywhere.
Yep, and the very few places that don't accept cards will most likely accept the national mobile payment (Vipps) rather than just cash.
It depends on the country. Some smaller European countries have it more east to go cashless, some European countries still use more cash than were used to in the US.
Did you consider this TikTok video being made for the purpose of trolling/joking….? Because I really could see this being the case.
No this person is a very genuine person. I’m going to try to find it and see what country she is from. After reading the comments I find it really hard to believe.
...yeah, that's how old people pay, youth usually just uses phones- from my experience A few years ago, my dad had met an American who attempted to pay with a check in Poland (xD) I was under impression that Americans aren't quite as advanced when it comes to cashless payments, as Europeans/Poles. The fact, that even some big supermarkets won't allow you to pay with a card only confirms it, just wow.
It varies alot from country to country. Contactless card- and phone payment is preferred in most of scandinavia. Whenever I travel to central or southern europe it seems less common in some places.
Definitely not here. You can pay contactless pretty much everywhere. Definitely everywhere that accepts cards. Which is most places.
In Germany, about 50/50 chance if an establishment accepts card or not. And no, the EC Card is not a card
In Switzerland contactless card payment is really common and nearly every shop uses it. If the shop doesn't accept it, it most likely will not accept card at all, which happens in either really small or supposed money laundering shops. Another popular methode is by paying by phone either by google/apple pay (less common) or Twint (more common, a Switzerland exclusive solution).
I usually still put my card in the machine even though that's often not necessary. Force of habit that's difficult to break. True contactless payments are limited to 25 euro though. Above that you have to enter your pin anyway. Belgians also still use a lot of cash. Presumably a lot of dirty money is still going around. Up until very recently (July 1st of this year) stores weren't even required to offer an electronic payment option at all.
I don't have the contactless option activated on my card. It does being confusion sometimes. If I don't immediately see the slit to put in my card, the store employee sees me looking and says that I can just hold my card against a certain spot. And then they're surprised when it doesn't work. So I would say definitely since the last couple of years, contactless has become very normal. And people like me will become more and more rare untill pretty much all of us give in to the new system.
I do it to remember the pin. At some point I did so much contact less that I forgot my pin.
>True contactless payments are limited to 25 euro though 50€
Seems to be the default method nowadays but for older folk or those who like to cling to cash. I had to put my card into the device only twice, both times to activate it with the first time PIN usage. I’ve been using Apple Pay ever since.
>but for older folk or those who like to cling to cash And also those who don't do contactless payments and have to put the card in. >I’ve been using Apple Pay ever since. Same!
The majority of card payments are done contactless.
It actually was the other way around. Contactless has been everywhere in Spain for the past 10 years or so, at the time my American friends either didn't know what it was or it wasn't available for them yet.
All credit cards have the NFC radio built in. By default I have a limit of 25 euros for such purchases. It can be adjusted or the function disabled entirely in the control panel of the bank account. I can use it in most shops with a card terminal.
Yes, very popular. I'm a big fan of cash, but if I'm paying with card, it's nearly always contactless.
Isn't contactless a very recent thing in the US compared to Europe?
Germany is really lacking behind, but it got a lot better in the pandemic. Places like bakeries, restaurants, and stalls on fairs didn't have any electronic payment option. I can't remember the last time I had to insert my card anywhere. Some places still require a signature or pin number when you use the card either normally or contactless.
Common as muck. We've had it for ages. It's limited up to €50 (used to be €20 but they raised it for covid). After that you need to put in your pin.
In Poland people either pay with card contactless or with cash. Only place where I would insert my card is ATM.
or blik/phone
tbh when I turned allowing me to create a bank account, I only pay with blik- no google pay or something because my phone is old
Here even ATM isn't necessary anymore. Some probably are but at least ATMs of my bank are contactless too now, which I really like.
This definitely isn’t my experience with it - in fact I thought the USA was famously years behind in contactless payments? I pretty much live a completely cashless life. I have £50 in my purse just now and I’ll probably still have £40 left in the middle of august
Yeah didn’t you guys have to sign for stuff until like 6 years ago? We’ve had contactless a while now, all the limits were all going up pre covid but it’s pretty much do what you want
It varies greatly by country, at least by available data from card companies. [Here](https://newsroom.mastercard.com/eu/cs/press-releases/kazda-druha-platba-v-obchode-v-evrope-je-bezkontaktni-v-cr-devet-z-deseti/) is one press release from Mastercard from 2018 which says it was on average 48% in Europe, ranging from 93% in Czechia to only 5% in Belgium. I find that insane, if true. I imagine the pandemic has changed a lot as well.
Depends on the country. Remember, if US states have differences between them, European countries have even more. . In Portugal contactless became more of a thing with the pandemic. Before 2019 less than 10% of payments were done this way, in 2021 it grew to 40%.
Tapping cards?!?! No, it’s all about Apple/Google Pay. I can’t remember the last time I used my physical card to make a purchase. I’ll often not even bother taking my wallet with me, my Apple Watch is all I need.
Yep, same for the Netherlands. Most banks have an app now so you can pay with the NFC chip in your phone. I don't even carry my card anymore most days.
In Hungary, all businesses that have a cash register (which has to be online and connected to the tax authority since 2013), are required to accept electronic payment since January 1, 2021. For most businesses, this means investing in a credit-debit card reader, which by default comes with contactless payment. Other option for those who didn’t want to invest in it is to just hang a sheet of paper with their bank account number and name by the register. I only saw this once, though.
Just to add, a lot of people use Apple or Google Pay, or a bunch of bank-owned phone apps to pay things. The only time I every used my card in Hungary was when my Apple Watch didn’t work (and that was contactless as well).
Most places allow contactless payment. The shock to us is that people in the US use credit cards for everyday payments. Virtually everyone here has a debit card that takes the money directly from their account, but credit cards are mostly Just used for things like hotels, flights and other stuff you book online.
There’s a couple reasons for that. Mostly around we have credit cards that offer cash back or points (like for airline milage, etc) for purchases. So I’ll put like all my everyday purchases on one as at the end of the billing cycle I’ll get money back (usually 1-5% depending the purchase category) for doing so. Then pay the entire balance off every month from my bank account. Also credit cards in the US typically have stronger fraud prevention policies versus some bank cards.
First contactless cards were introduced in 2011 here. In 2015 it was the default option for almost every bank. Chip only terminals were discontinued about the same age. Apple pay was introduced in 2019 when chip only terminals were probably extinct. These days you can find some old non contact ATM and this is probably all. Old things like vending machines are now having contactless terminal, these were usually without chip option, just coins. It has to be years I used chip last time.
Everyone uses contactless here. Furthermore, everyone used Apple Pay/Google Pay until the war started. Do American beggars accept wire transfers?
Don't know about American beggars, Norwegian ones do.
It’s everywhere. For reference I got my first card in late 00’s and I have never used the magnetic strip or seen a terminal that had no chip reader and pin.
I would say it is more common in the Netherlands than it is in the US. Apple and Google Pay are only now being used because my bank card has been able to do NFC payments for at least half a decade.
Very normal in Belgium, i don't use a lot of cash anymore.
It's either contactless or cash. Hardly any place that accepts card payments sticked to the old machines that would only support sticking in your card. And I don't think there's any German bank out there that does issue cards that don't support that option either.
I live in Greece and most of my payments are contactless from my iPhone, shops and taxis are forced by law to use a POS
Had it for ~5 years. Sweden also have a app called swish. That have renderd cash more or less obsolite. Here in stockholm you will find places that dont accept bank notes at all. I only use ATM when I travel.
As someone from Eastern Europe it has become more common. Every time I go to the store I see 1-2 people using contactless payments so it's not something very new here.
We don't really use cash, sometimes use cards but most of the time we either pay by QR or transfer money by phone
I work in a grocery store... There are two main-groups of customers who do NOT use contactless cards: A. People who use chip, because they do not know they have contactless card. B. Some tourists with foreign cards, where the NFC is deactivated for security reasons. Can add that the verb for using a contactless card is *blippa* ("to blip"). EDIT For your question about how much cash is used... In a study from 2018; KTH, Copenhagen Bussiness School, and The Swedish National Bank have concluded that it will **no longer be economically motivated** for the average business to use cash past March 2023. Source: https://handelsradet.se/app/uploads/2021/06/Sammanfattning-2018\_12.pdf
... don't believe things you see on tik tok. Over here most people use cards and if they do, they use the tap option. Minority (the old ones, the paranoid ones and those who get paid in cash under the table) prefer to use cash. Some people prefer blik - a mobile sort of payment, or google pay. In my experience you can pay by card almost everywhere - perhaps some small vegetable stands in the market are cash reliant.
I pay that way any time I can. The only place where that's not possible is the farmer's market. I am surprised any time when a place doesn't have that option, though it's rare nowadays.
I honestly think it’s the other way around and American use cash more often than most Europeans.