Getty Images / Peter Macdiarmid / Staff

Update 22/05/2017:

In September 2015, UK officials increased the limit for contactless card payments from £20 to £30. Since then contactless payments have grown in number, plus Apple and Android Pay have been widely adopted.


Apple has now said more than half of the contactless pay points in the UK can be used with no limit when paying using its iOS and Apple Watch payment method.

"We think the majority of the contactless terminals [in the UK] are now limitless," Jennifer Bailey, the firm's head of payments, said according to The Telegraph.

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As Apple Pay uses a biometric identifier it is possible for payments of more than the contactless limit to be made. Apple says the use of its contactless technology has increased by 300 per cent in the last year and Apple Pay is now available with 23 banks.

Original story 01/09/2015:


The spending limit on contactless payments has been increased to £30. The new limit, up from £20, means the average supermarket spend of £25 will now be covered by the increasingly popular payment method.

Most card terminals should already be able to process the higher transaction, but some might not be updated for "a number of weeks", according to industry trade body The UK Cards Association (UKCA).

More than £2.5bn has already been spent on contactless cards in the UK this year, compared to £2.32bn for the whole of 2015. The increase in the contactless payment limit was introduced in response to the popularity of the technology. "The growth in contactless payments shows people want to use contactless cards and increasing the limit gives customers even more opportunities to pay in this way," said Graham Peacop, chief executive of UKCA.

There are already more than 69 million contactless payment cards in circulation in the UK, with more than 9.3 million of those issued between January and June 2015.


The increase to £30 was first announced in February and since then the popularity of contactless has continued to rise with the launch of Apple Pay and Barclay's bPay service giving further options to pay without chip-and-pin.

Despite increased use fraud on contactless cards was still "extremely low" at one penny for every £100, according to UKCA.

This story has been updated to indicate the change in Apple Pay cost limits