Bring your bank card to a payment terminal to pay for a purchase without entering your code: a gesture that is now commonplace. It was performed 5.1 billion times in 2020, according to the Annual Report of the Observatory for the Security of Payment Means (OSMP), unveiled on Tuesday July 6 by the Banque de France.
The number of “contactless” transactions increased by almost 40% last year. But above all, some 80 billion euros were spent in this way, almost 90% more than in 2019, details the report (these statistics relate to national payments, made in France with a French card).
The restrictions affecting local shops have therefore not broken the strong growth dynamic of “pay without touching”, which began in 2015. It must be said that the Covid-19 pandemic has aroused among consumers “A stronger aversion to payments with physical contact (cash, check, card with entry of the code)”, recalls the OSMP.
And that, since May 11, 2020, date of the first deconfinement, we can pay up to 50 euros without contact, against 30 euros previously.
If the time when the French were very suspicious of contactless seems to be over, this raising of the ceiling had all the same, in 2020, revived certain fears of the development of fraud. Unfounded concerns: “The fraud rate [pour les paiements sans contact] reached its lowest level ever ” in 2020, falling to 0.013% (against 0.019% in 2019), rejoiced Tuesday, the governor of the Bank of France, François Villeroy de Galhau.
This represents approximately one euro of fraud for 7,700 euros of payment. And a total amount of fraud of 10.5 million euros (against around 8 million in 2019).
Online, 1 € of fraud for 575 € paid
However, all is not rosy in the kingdom of the Blue Card. The fraud rate recorded on all bank card transactions did not decrease in 2020. It even increased very slightly, from 0.064% to 0.068% (i.e. one euro of fraud for every 1,470 euros of payment). ). The responsibility for this development is not to be found on the side of payments in shops (with code or contactless), or withdrawals from the distributor, but remote payments, which weigh, in value, for 20% of transactions by menu.
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