One of the consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic is the immediate and long-term changes of consumer behavior it will have. It is expected that many consumers will have an aversion to touching things that are in high contact situations such as card reader pin pads at checkouts. Given the choice between holding the credit card over the reader for a second or touching an often used pin pad, many consumers will now naturally trend to wanting to use the contactless option.

Says SmartMetric’s President and CEO, Chaya Hendrick: “We will be seeing a major uplift in the usage of contactless credit and debit cards going forward, not only because of the convenience of just waving the card over the card reader but now because of the fear of touching common public devices.”

The huge advantage for card issuing Banks with the SmartMetric biometric contactless card solution is that it uses the card holder’s fingerprint to authenticate the card holder making the transaction. It is without question that a person’s fingerprint biometrics is a far more secure method of authentication then a four digit code entered on a pin pad. This higher level of security and absolute identification validation of the card user means the limitation on card spend because the card transaction is a contactless transaction rather than a contact transaction, is no longer needed.

Contactless Payment Market

Global Forecast to 2025 report published by MarketsandMarkets says the global contactless credit/debit card payment market size is expected to grow from USD 10.3 billion in 2020 to USD 18.0 billion by 2025. This is at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.7% during the forecast period. The major advantage offered by contactless payments is that customers can instantly complete transactions with the tap of a card. This increases the speed of transactions, making contactless payments even more efficient, stated the MarketsandMarkets report.

SmartMetric’s biometric fingerprint secured and activated contact and contactless credit/debit cards are ready to ship to its partners in Europe at the end of the COVID-19 lockdown.