French adoption of contactless payments grew significantly in 2020

The global pandemic durably changed and accelerated payment methods. Card usage becomes dominant in daily purchases according to Groupement des cartes bancaires (CB).

Even amid a context where consumption was severely impacted by the pandemic – with household consumption down 7% according to INSEE - the amount of card and mobile payments was essentially equivalent to that of 2019. 2020 concluded with nearly €490 billion in Carte Bancaire (CB) payments. CB payments are down just slightly by around 5% with 11.8 billion CB transactions in 2020 compared to 12.4 billion in 2019.

This relative stability of CB payments, despite the economic downturn, is explained primarily due to the fact that during the closures, confinements, or prolonged restrictions on certain sectors, the French are preferring card payments more and more for their daily purchases. The annual CB/Kantar from the end of 2020 confirmed this trend with 86% of those polled declaring that they now prefer paying by card or mobile compared to all other forms of payment.

The remarkable increase of non-contact CB with 4.6 billion transactions

The year 2020 will be understood as a year of marked acceleration in non-contact payments. After the first billion transactions were reached in 2017, then 2 and 3 billion surpassed in 2018 and 2019, there were 4.6 billion CB non-contact payments in 2020. The usage of this technology, considered more hygienic, was boosted by the raising of the ceiling from €30 to €50 deployed nationally just a few weeks after the first confinement had been lifted.

Also in 2020, nearly 60% of CB transactions less than €50 were contactless. More than half of CB payments are now done contactless or mobile, demonstrating the confidence and adoption of card users and merchants in this mode of payment.

This enthusiasm was also noted in the CB / Kantar barometer. 20% of respondents said that they used contactless for the first time during the health crisis and 93% of regular users said they started using it even more frequently.  

Distance selling, the second vector of growth with 1.8 billion CB transactions in 2020

The number of CB payments used for distance sales and e-commerce grew 12% in 2020. In value, these types of payment represented around 22% of all CB transactions. From April 2020, consumers switched over a large percentage of their daily purchases to the internet. At grocery stores, “drives” were particularly in demand. Many stores converted to omnichannel, especially with the implementation of “click and collect” between the first and second confinement.  

To support and accelerate this transformation, CB and the Commerce Federation launched the site “ActionCommerceCB”, a platform bringing together more than 200 solutions proposed by banks, SMEs, and French start-ups, intended to help independent businesses evolve their distribution models with the implementation of online commerce in the face of the crisis.

A major acceleration in restaurant tickets converting to cards

2020 also saw the acceleration of the dematerialization of restaurant vouchers, confirmed by a doubling in the number of cards with nearly 2 million restaurant cards issued by restaurant voucher companies. Nearly 70 million restaurant card transactions were recorded in the year.