Contactless payments are growing more popular during the pandemic of COVID-19. MasterCard’s survey, carried among 17,000 respondents from 19 countries, shows that the popularity of this method of payment has grown by 40% as compared to the first quarter of 2019.

Вloomchain.ru reports that according to MasterCard CEO AjayBanga, this increase is conditioned by the consumers’ desire to “go in and out of the store without exchanging money and touching the payment machines or something else”. “We are witnessing the increase of contactless transactions and we believe the tendency will hold on after the pandemic too,” said Banga.

79% of the surveyed have said they use only contactless payments because of the reliability and security of the method. Nearly half of the surveyed (46%) have said they started using contactless methods instead of traditional payments just recently.

MasterCard’s analysts have noted that the card-not-present transactions have also grown more popular. With this method, the cardholder and the card itself aren’t present at the time and place of the payment. Because of the restrictions imposed by the authorities in large cities, the popularity of this payment method has grown by 40% on a year-on-year basis.

At the same time, the number of card-present transactions has dropped drastically.

During a conference call with the analysts, Ajay Banga stated that the decrease of consumer expenses was “being stabilized” in most markets, which gives hope that the expenses will reach “the bottom” soon and the markets will start recovering.

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