Launched in the US in 2005, contactless payment systems begin to gain traction in France. This system proved to be very popular in the US for small amounts, credit card companies have waived their signature requirements for so-called “small ticket” items; Visa, for instance, doesn’t require your signature for purchases at or below $25. It seems that banks in France will follow the same path, which is a good news both for contactless usage and NFC applications when those payment applications will be embedded in a mobile phone.
More information (in French) here: La Banque populaire va tester à Besançon le paiement sans contact pendant six mois. Il concerne les achats de moins de 20 euros
And here: Le paiement par carte bancaire sans contact à l’essai en France
Tags: Banque Populaire, Carte Bancaire, Contactless payments, visaFlickr NFC & RFID Photos
Lots of assumptions in your post are misleading. In the US, only 1 out of 133 merchants accept contactless cards, and a growing number are saying they are not interested. In 2010, if everything goes well, one analyst is predicting that 1.6% of transactions will be contactless (but that’s the same analyst that originally forecasted that 230 milion contactless cards would be issued in 2007, a forecast which is almost 10x bigger than the actual number of 25 million now forecasted). Nothing in the data indicates that contactless is “very popular in the US”. Also, to make things worse, Visa and MasterCard have eliminated the signature on ALL transactions under $25, using any payment card, not just contactless. The real problem is that the industry has not looked seriously at how to make contactless exciting and appealing for merchants. If that doesn’t happen, contactless adoption will be extremely slow and painful.