British Retail Consortium (BRC), Barclaycard and Mastercard announced this morning that you won’t need to use your pin number for amounts up to £45.
From April 1st, the contactless threshold is being raised from £30 to £45. The idea is to limit cash transactions and to aid social distancing and reduce the need for contact between shoppers and retailers. This means less need to use the keypad at checkouts and less need to handle cash which is likely to carry viruses and bacteria.
Although this is a welcome measure, there are concerns that even though April 1 is the start date, it may take a while for this to be implemented to every payment system across the UK.
The BRC’s head of payments policy Andrew Cregan said:
The last contactless limit increase to £30 took two years to implement but, given the extraordinary circumstances we face today, this new £45 limit will be rolled out from next week.
“Some shops will take longer to make the necessary changes, given the strain they’re under. In the meantime, most customers can continue to make contactless payments for higher amounts using their smartphone.
More and more shoppers are using their smartphones to pay for goods and we may yet see the day when cash becomes irrelevant.