number of Contactless Payments in the Netherlands increased by 77 percent compared to last year. This is what Mastercard, the company responsible for the Maestro payment service, reports.

According to Arjan Bol of Mastercard Netherlands, Contactless payment in Europe ‘has taken a huge flight, with the Netherlands at the forefront’. Since June 2018, 51 percent of all bank card payments in the Netherlands have been made contactless, compared to 46 percent in January.

Mastercard reports that 90 percent of all Dutch bank cards are suitable for contactless payments and 49 percent of these cards are used at least once a month. The Dutch Payments Association confirms the upward trend and reports that consumers in the Netherlands have so far paid as much contactlessly in 2018 as in 2017.

According to the official figures, the number of contactless payments in Belgium is indeed on the rise, but that is probably because this form of payment in Belgium has much more to get off the ground. There the number of contactless payments rose by 401 percent, but in July this form of payment only accounted for a share of 5 percent of all bank card payments.

In the whole of Europe, the number of contactless payments in the period January to August increased by an average of 97 percent over the same period last year. In more than fifteen countries in Europe, contactless payments account for more than half of all store transactions. It is particularly popular in Eastern European countries: In the Czech Republic and Georgia, the share of contactless payments is above 90%, and Hungary and Poland, for example, are above 80%.