IF YOU’RE STILL tapping your bank card, you’re in the minority – most contactless payments in shops, restaurants and other outlets were made using phones and smartwatches in the first half of this year.

A new report from the Banking & Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) found the 58% of contactless payments made using the likes of Apple Pay and Google Pay was up from 52% in the same period of last year.

Contactless payments continue to dominate point of service sales in Ireland, accounting for almost nine out of ten card payments made from January to June.

The report also found that the these habits vary by region, with Dublin having the highest number of contactless and mobile wallets payments per capita. 

Carlow had the second highest number of contactless payments per capita, followed by Limerick and Waterford while Roscommon came in with the lowest amount per capita.  

In a recent survey commissioned by BPFI, only seven percent of consumers said they don’t use cash at all, while over 50% had less than €50 on them. 

The European Central Bank (ECB) has proposed a digital euro that would be a digital form of cash, issued by the central bank and available to everyone in the euro area. The proposal was first made in 2020 by ECB President Christine Lagarde suggested the idea.

This plan has been met with privacy concerns across the European Union which has led to the proposal being altered to give member states more control. Under the new proposal, set to be discussed this week, member states would be able to set a maximum amount of digital euros consumers can hold.

The new BPFI report found that almost one in four in Ireland do not plan on using the digital euro while “14% of consumers say they they didn’t know how much digital euro they expected to hold”.

Just under half of participants said they are “likely or very likely to use a digital euro for online purchases, sending money to friends or family or for point of service payments.”

BFPI say these results show the need for raising greater consumer awareness of the digital euro and how consumers could benefit from using it in the future.