MasterCard Contactless Users in Asia-Pacific Increase 49 Percent (March 31, 2015)
Consumers in Asia-Pacific are taking to contactless payments in a big way, with the number of unique contactless users in 2014 up by 49 percent, compared with the previous year, according to MasterCard.
Australia and Singapore are leading the way in the region. Nearly two-thirds of all MasterCard in-store transactions in Australia are contactless, and the number of unique contactless users there jumped 45 percent between 2013 and 2014. In Singapore, the number of MasterCard contactless users in the country, which more than doubled in a year, set a record for the card network. As of December 2014, one-third of supermarket transactions were contactless, according to MasterCard.
The adoption of mobile point of sale (m-POS) is one of the key drivers for contactless payments usage across the region, according to an announcement. “Mobile devices are giving smaller merchants the capability to transform the payments experience for their customers, especially at the point of sale, as they now can accept card payments,” said Raj Dhamodharan, MasterCard’s group head of emerging payments in Asia-Pacific.
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