WAYS TO PAY: TOKENS Safe and seamless: Three key payment trends benefit hugely from tokenisation, says Dawson
Tokensofmerit Myles Dawson, UK MD of payments platform Adyen, considers how tokenisation improves the customer experience in the face of rising contactless limits and tighter security
UK contactless card payments went 'ton-up' in October – banks lifting the payment ceiling for the second time in two years. The ton was a term coined by bikers after the Second World War for machines that could hit 100mph, and there's no doubt contactless payments have gone
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full-throttle, too, having been heavily promoted during the pandemic as a way to reduce infection risk. Figures from industry group UK Finance show the volume of contactless debit card transactions made in the UK in June was 75 per cent higher than two years earlier, while Barclaycard said 88.6 per cent of all UK card payments in 2020 were contactless. The switch from a £30 limit to £45 in April 2020 prompted widespread discussion about security; there’s been comparatively little controversy over the latest limit increase to £100, although a Sunday Times poll recently suggested that most consumers were nervous of accelerating quite so fast. Some banks, in fact – Lloyds and Starling among them – perhaps conscious of their rising liability
and potential pain to consumers should they be victim of fraud, have given customers the ability to place their own spending controls on cards for the first time, reverting back to £30 if they wish. Whatever headroom individual consumers are comfortable with, the apparently irreversible growth of contactless is further evidence of the trend towards low/no-friction payments. However, loved as they are by consumers and demanded by online retailers keen not to see shoppers abandon their carts in an impatient strop, there is an inevitable tension between fast and frictionless payments and security. Some in the industry viewed strong customer authentication (SCA), which introduces additional secure steps in the
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