80% of retailers in Canada have NFC capable terminals and 12% of all retail payments are made with contactless technology. Chip cards that offer contact-free payment are preferred in Canada whereas the USA is focussed more so on Smartphone payments.

In Canada, the contact-free payment industry is growing at a rapid of around 17% every year. Mastercard’s “Tap & Go” supported card is among the highest in the country and almost all credit cards have been enabled with contactless payment technology. Mastercard covers a majority of the top retailers in the country and has recorded greater than 330 million contactless payments.

Interac Flash, another contactless option is now available in more than half of Canadian debit cards and is on the cusp of being activated in every new card issued by the provider. A recent study has shown that 50% of Canadian smart phones will be NFC capable by 2017, and that number will just to 75% by mid-2019.

World Wide Contactless Payments

UK

The contactless market in the UK is growing at the rate of 27% per year and an estimated £380.8 million was spent in retail location via contactless payment systems. Mobile payments and contactless travel are also on the rise in the country and these forms of payments are common across all ages and groups in the country.

Taiwan

There are almost a million contactless transactions monthly in this East Asian country and by the end of 2014,  27 Taiwanese banks were signed on with Gemalto’s Trusted Services Hub (TSH) who was set to launch NFC payment services. As of the start of the following year, there were 24,000 contactless terminals noted in Taiwan retail locations, taxis, restaurants, and movie theatres.

Turkey

Turkey has always been one of the most advanced countries in Europe and when it comes to contactless payments. By the end of 2010, more than two-thirds of the major banks in the country had issued contactless cards and there are more than 60,000 POS contactless terminals throughout the country. Every Starbucks uses contactless payments and most ATM’s do as well.

Australia

In Australia, contactless payments are used daily. Consumers are demanding that retailers make their checkout process as easy as possible and merchants have been upgrading to modern terminals to stay ahead of the trends. In July of 2014 alone, greater than 58 million transactions were completed with Visa PayWave technology, whereas the mobile payments had reached over 3 billion by the end of 2018.

Japan

The Japanese people are often first in many things that have to do with emerging technology, and contactless wallets are no exception. Sony offers the most NFC technologies of all countries with more than 70 million of those devices located in Japan itself. Japan uses NFC for everything from mini-payments to product branding.

Sweden

In Sweden, contactless debit and credit payments make up €10 billion in earnings opportunities. The most popular mobile operators have created the mobile wallet payment system Wy Wallet that is used for almost all of the mobile services in Sweden. The app has more 1.2 million clients which represents over 25% of the 6 million mobile owners in the Swedish population. It’s also among the first countries to start using mobile payments and contactless technology in everyday life.

Poland

In Poland, there are 9 banks that joined forces to roll out a cloud based mobile Visa contactless payment method back in 2015. This further cemented the countries reputation for being a leader in the field of digital payment innovation. Poland is Visa’s biggest market with contactless technology making up at least 50% of all of Visa’s payments when looking at the transaction volume per capita.

Singapore

By the start of August 2013, there were 1 million transactions recorded through Visa PayWave alone. By July of the following year, that number had doubled accounting for 22% of all in person payment interactions. Contactless payment has become quite common and Ez-link is now the largest provider of contactless cards with more than 15 million signups since its inception in 2008.

Canada in the Global Context

In comparison to the other countries of the world, you can see that Canada is making waves with the help of Royal Debit to bring contactless payment methods and technology to more Canadians. Large numbers of retailers finally understand that offering customers the efficiency and simplicity of NFC POS terminals for their purchases is not only a good business move, but it is also good for the economy as a whole. Get in touch with us to see how we can help your business get on board with this trend today.