Every shop in Europe will accept contactless payments by 2020

Every single shop across Europe will accept contactless payments by 2020, industry giant MasterCard has predicted.

Addressing TrustedReviews during its ‘Future of Payments’ event this morning, the company has revealed that contactless payment systems – such as those compatible with Apple Pay and Samsung Pay – are set to become an ever-present feature by the turn of the decade.

Although contactless terminals are now a common sight in many UK cities, Mastercard’s head of emerging payment methods, Mike Cowan, has predicted how their expansion will soar during the coming years.

“It is moving at different paces in different parts of Europe,” Cowan told us. “Last year we set out a couple of standards for the industry to try and achieved universal contactless acceptance across Europe within a sensible timescale.”

At present, contactless payment terminals have started to roll out across 22 European nations. By 2019, however, MasterCard predicts that a staggering 195 billion transactions will be made annually using mobile devices.

Looking to the system’s future expansion, Cowan added: “From the beginning of next year, any new payment terminal that gets deployed has to accept contactless.

“This is giving us a universal footprint where people will be able to use their phones to pay for stuff in this way.

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The road to universal contactless systems is already well underway, with London’s transport network, TfL, today confirming it has serves 4 million contactless customers during the past nine months.

“We are now doing about 1.2 million contactless transaction every week day,” Shashi Verma, TfL’s Director of Customer Experience told us.

He added: “We have seen 18,000 new contactless cards on our systems every single day. Overall we have seen 4 million contactless cards used on our system. These are from 61 countries”