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eMoney News

Contactless technology 'showing promise'
8 Jan 2010

People are becoming more keen to adopt contactless technology, with some 21.7 per cent of US consumers now holding a contactless debit card, according to a new report.

The paper, from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, also indicated that one-quarter of all people polled have a contactless credit card, while 9.5 per cent have adopted a contactless system that allows them to pay tolls, Digital Transactions News reported.

While the report did not specify actual usage of this technology, it estimates that some 44.3 per cent of people have now adopted at least one type of contactless payment.

Scott Schuh, director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's Consumer Payments Research Center, commented to the news source that traditional cash-based payments "have been giving way" to new technologies.

"It appears the use of paper-based instruments has dropped pretty dramatically in the last few years," he said.

Recently, UK Payments anticipated that as cheques are phased out over the next decade, further innovations will be made in cashless payments.