BBC makes Cashless Street the focus for contactless

Contactless payment is booming like never before, with £2.3bn spent on ‘tap and go’ transactions in 2014, according to the UK Cards Association. As a result, the limit on contactless cards is to rise from £20 to £30.

With the technology back on the news agenda, the BBC 6 O’clock News visited our Cashless Street from 2014, Beech Road in Manchester, to discover traders’ and shoppers’ attitudes.

Watch the BBC Contactless Payment Video News item.

Back in June 2014, we turned this street of independent traders cashless for the day to test if shoppers and traders were ready to dump notes and coins. The results showed that retailers reported an increase in takings across the board and consumers liked the convenience of the cashless transaction. You can read all about the social experiment here.

Now less than 12 months later, use of cards is going through the roof with some 319 million contactless transactions in the UK last year.

As Peter Kellett, owner of JB Richardson Bakery on Beech Road, says: “Society is moving and we have to move that way.”

With more contactless-enabled cards appearing in consumers’ purses and wallets all the time, use is only going to increase further. This, in turn, will lead to more discussion on raising the spending limit on contactless higher.

What this means for any business still to take the plunge into card payments – contactless or Chip and PIN – is that beyond all doubt your customers’ spending habits have changed and you cannot afford to be left behind.

To find out more about how to get started with card payments, and how contactless payments work, download our free guides here.