INFO EUROPE 1
This is an unexpected consequence of the coronavirus. At a time when proximity is no longer required, and where typing your code on a machine that everyone touches can put off some, payment by contactless credit card is particularly appreciated. Its ceiling could therefore be raised from 30 to 50 euros, according to information from Europe 1. The decision must be decided by the banks at the very beginning of next week.
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A decision early next week
"Our will is to go there, but we have to make sure that it works from a technical point of view," says a large banker. His establishment must do all the tests this Friday. Concretely, this consists of verifying that it is possible to adapt the terminals at merchants, but also our credit cards, remotely. An essential procedure to avoid reproducing the situation of October 2017, when the ceiling had dropped from 20 to 30 euros: it was then necessary to change all the cards, which had taken three years. This time, "we must be able to adapt everything in one month, once the decision has been made," says an actor in his case.
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Since the coronavirus, contactless has taken off
Because since the start of confinement, our way of paying has completely changed: withdrawals from distributors have dropped by more than 50%, while contactless payment has soared. "We practically tripled it," confirms Emmanuel Castro, baker in Laroque des Albères, in the Pyrénées-Orientales. "It now represents almost 80-90% of our collections, where it weighed 30% before. We hardly need to offer it anymore, customers do it automatically, even the elderly."
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And yet, the increase in contactless payment has been only 5% since the crisis. But the explanation is simple, the amount of our average purchases has greatly increased: more than four out of ten payments today are more than 30 euros. As for the average basket in hypermarkets, it went from 45.33 to 74.56 euros. It is therefore to respond to this development that the banks, pushed by the public authorities, want to increase the ceiling. But at the same time, Bercy makes it clear that payment in currency is the only one that traders do not have the right to refuse. This does not prevent some from doing so, to the point of worrying the Defender of Rights, who was forced to recall the rules this week.