“Visa Europe will spend around EUR 10 million in 2009 to equip retailers with appropriate reading terminals which can accept payments made via Visa payWave contactless cards, reports Euroactiv.com citing the CEO of Visa Europe Peter Ayliffe.

The majority of readers are being distributed in the UK, followed by Italy and Turkey, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and Switzerland. 2009 will be the year of contactless payments, touted Ayliffe, estimating that the Visa payWave contactless cards numbers in Europe will increase from the current 500,000 to seven million by the end of the year. At the same time, Visa’s rival MasterCard has made similar plans in Europe. MasterCard has recently teamed up with global retailer Carrefour to launch the Pass MasterCard contactless card in February across France. The card uses the MasterCard PayPass contactless technology and comes with both credit card and debit card features. At the end of Q3 2008, there were almost 44 million MasterCard PayPass cards and devices in the world.” in the PAYPERS, January 27, 2009.

These are definitely good news for the future of NFC. In Europe, one of the main issues for massive adoption of contactless payment was the fact that the market is organized in such a way that merchants have to pay for their own POS terminals. With Visa and Mastercard investing in contactless reader deployment, one of the deadlocks is now gone. Still remains the case for a clear business model with banks and MNOs. As in the rest of the world. Still very good news, though.

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