Contactless payment and US chip-and-PIN adoption drives smart card growth in 2014

The United States’ migration to EMV-standard chip-and-PIN cards, and the growing demand for contactless technologies, defined a high-growth payment card market in 2014, according to the Smart Payment Association (SPA). Preliminary figures, released in advance of the SPA’s annual review of the card payment market, show over 1.5 billion smart payment cards where shipped globally last year, with some 40% featuring contactless ‘tap and go’ technology. Download Presentation at SCA's 8th Annual Payments Summit 2015 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA at www.smartpaymentassociation.com The United States, the only major market not to have previously adopted EMV-standard cards, accounted for 185 million card and module shipments as the country makes the transition to chip-and-PIN. This number was significantly higher than the 30 million cards shipped in 2013 – reflecting growing enthusiasm from the country’s regulators, banks and retailers to combat card fraud on a national scale. In a clear example of federal support for EMV transition, President Obama signed an executive order in October 2014 to apply chip-and-PIN technology to newly-issued and existing government credit and debit cards, and to deploy EMV-supported payment terminals in federal agencies. Contactless technology continued its rapid global growth. In 2014, four out of every ten smart payment cards featured the...