Last updated: 18 March 2016
Compared to other European markets, Germany is reported to be slower than others in adopting contactless technology. This has been attributed in part to the seemingly more traditional views of the nation, who still use cash for 55% of all payments at the POS. But contactless technology is gaining ground. Payments made through Apple Pay have been predicted to hit £200m by the end of 2016, and rivals Google and Samsung have announced their service offerings this year. In addition, the contactless infrastructure in Germany is growing, with more than 57,000 terminals accepting mobile contactless payments with Visa and V PAY. Contactless technology is clearly here to stay.
In our European study of contactless business adoption, we looked at the attitudes and plans for the technology in the Germany, UK and Spain. The results showed that overall, European businesses are enthusiastic about the adoption of the technology. In fact, only 8% of companies admitted not having launched a contactless project yet. Moving forward, businesses in Europe predict that 10% of their transactional activity will be made up of contactless payment technologies within the next three years.
But in terms of regional investment, Germany places in second behind the UK, but ahead of Spain when embracing contactless card (49%) and mobile (45%) payments. In contrast, the country is relatively forward thinking in the use of wearable devices for contactless payment, only one percent behind Spain (34% vs 35%) and considerably ahead of the UK (25%).
With the use of any new technology comes security concerns for businesses and consumers. In Germany, security around contactless card payments is the main concern, over and above paying with mobile or with wearable devices.
Security was also highlighted as the key challenge facing contactless technology for German businesses. Whereas building consumer trust was highlighted by UK companies (50%) and for Spain, the main issue is the implementation of new terminals (50%).
Our next blog will focus on the Spanish results, but in the meantime, you can read full details of the research in the report, which you can download here.
And feel free to let us know your thoughts, by tweeting to us @Gemalto, or leave a comment in the section below.
