Reasons Your Merchant Clients Should Prepare To Accept Contactless Payments

By Chris Lee, President, North America Strategic Partnerships & Emerging Markets, Moneris Solutions

If current activity within the payment industry is any indication, contactless payment is gearing up to become the next most popular method of payment acceptance. The mandatory migration to EMV chip and PIN marks the beginning of the end of card swiping in the U.S. Consumers will soon be confronted with learning new ways to pay and “tap and go” will undoubtedly be one of them. Fortunately for merchants and consumers, contactless payment technology comes with big benefits to those on both sides of the transaction.

Apart from the obvious advantages of speed and convenience, contactless payments are characterized by key security features. Near field communication (NFC) is the wireless communication protocol that makes contactless payments through either a card or mobile device possible. NFC sends data between devices over a short distance, and is inherently secure by virtue of its extremely short range and sensitive signals that are difficult to intercept. To physically infiltrate an NFC signal, a fraudster would need to be in close proximity to the transaction with very clear intentions.

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