Tech

Contactless payment: the €50 ceiling will soon change in France

Contactless payment could soon experience change in France. For the moment, the ceiling is limited to 50 €, however a new technology already used in Germany would make it possible to remedy the problem. The goal is simple: to be able to pay any amount without contact.

contactless payment pin online
Credits: Unsplash

With the Covid-19 pandemic and the democratization of barrier gestures, contactless payment has quickly established itself as one of the most secure means of payment. A study by the Observatory for the Security of Payment Means published in July 2021 stated thata French person uses contactless payment to pay for purchases. It must be said that the FBF, the French Banking Federation, has done everything to motivate the French to opt for this method of payment, starting with raising the ceiling to €50 instead of €30.

Things haven’t changed since, and above the €50 mark, you must necessarily insert your bank card into a terminal and enter your code to validate the transaction. Same observation after having accumulated several successive contactless payments. However, this could change very soon, as explained by our colleagues from the newspaper Ouest France.

Indeed, French banking establishments will be able to turn to a new technology already used in Germany: the “Online PIN”. We could summarize this technology as a classic contactless payment, which is however accompanied by entering a four-digit PIN code on a terminal.

Also read: The iPhone becomes a contactless payment terminal with Tap to Pay

PIN Online, the future of contactless payment

As you can see, we are no longer entirely on 100% contactless, but this technology completely eliminates the insertion of the bank card from the equation. Under €50, users will benefit from classic contactless, while they will use the “PIN Online” on higher sums. In France, this technology is currently used in the Parisian taxis of the G7 group. However, you must own a credit card operating on the CB and Visa/Mastercard network.

According to the words of the leader of PayXpert in the columns of Ouest France, the PIN Online will not be democratized in France for at least a year. This is indeed the time it will take for merchants and services to change the hardware and modify their server infrastructure to implement this new method of payment.

Source: West France

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