Contactless payment cards – Helping Sri Lanka go cashless

Visa Sri Lanka and Maldives Country Manager Anthony Watson

Sri Lanka’s digital payment landscape has been registering a tremendous growth, fueled by more and more consumers choosing to shop on line and engage in e commerce. 

According to Visa International Country Manager for Sri Lanka and the Maldives Anthony Watson, Sri Lanka has seen the ecommerce segment expand with a growth of 34% for year on year, as at July 2018.

This is mainly due to consumers wanting to adapt new technology and gaining a wider acceptance of digital payments; consumer confidence in the security of on line payments is also growing, says Watson, who adds that Visa understands and is responsive to changing consumer behavior on line.

While digital payments have grown, embracing of new technology in face to face transactions has also become relevant for consumers as they seek faster, easier and more convenient forms of payments.   “Which is one of the key reasons why contactless cards have been well received by consumers who have experienced the convenience first hand,” he adds.

According to Visa Group Country Manager, India and South Asia T.R. Ramachandran: “While today citizens have a plethora of digital payment methods to choose from, the failure to provide a seamless payment experience by most of these systems drives people back to using cash. By simplifying payments to a mere tap, which is not only seamless, quick and secured but also as intuitive as exchanging cash, contactless cards can increase stickiness among customers.”

All over the world, contactless cards are changing the financial environment, helping consumers go cashless; as the name suggests, contactless payment cards let users make payments with a mere tap at the PoS terminal. 

Making payments faster than ever, transactions with a contactless card take considerably less time, leading to shorter wait time and quick payment experience for customers. On the retailer front, this means more time to focus on adding incremental revenues through up and cross selling, and reduced loss of customers owing to long queues.

In India, the Finance Ministry recently came out with a directive advising banks to issue Near-Field Communication (NFC)-enabled contactless credit and debit cards. Despite the Government’s push on digital payments for a cashless India, the country remains highly cash dependent.

In Australia, researchers at the Reserve Bank of Australia found that around one-third of all PoS transactions were conducted using contactless cards in 2016, which is a 300% jump from 2013. Today, nearly 94% of transactions are contactless in Australia. A recent survey by The Guardian revealed that cash usage in the UK fell to 40% in 2016, against 62% in 2006, owing to the widespread adoption of contactless cards. 

In order to make way for the widespread adoption of contactless cards in Sri Lanka, payment card providers like Visa are also swiftly upgrading their infrastructure, thereby increasing the touch points that accept such technologies.