By Jun Ji-hye
The use of contactless payments, including credit and debit cards with contactless features and smartphones with digital wallets, has surged significantly over the past year in Korea, according to a survey released by global e-payment giant Visa, Wednesday.
The company attributed the rise partially to the introduction of Apple Pay in the country last year.
In the survey, which was conducted in June and questioned 1,000 people aged 20 to 59 in major cities including Seoul, 45 percent of respondents said they actually used contactless payments services.
The figure rose from 7.9 percent tallied last year, marking an almost sixfold increase.
Contactless payments refer to transactions using near-field communication, or NFC, payment devices, allowing transactions to be made by simply waving or tapping on contactless-enabled terminals.
“The increase is attributed to increasing adoption of EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa) contactless-enabled terminals, coupled with the introduction of Apple Pay in March last year,” Visa said.
Awareness of contactless payments has also increased more than 20 percentage points from 59.8 percent last year to 80.5 percent this year.
In particular, 88.5 percent of people in their 20s, 87.5 percent of iPhone users and 85 percent of those who recently traveled overseas responded that they were aware of such a payment method, exceeding the average.
About 48 percent of the users cited speed as the service’s key advantage, while 20.4 percent and 13.1 percent cited hygiene and security, respectively.
Industry watchers noted that many people have used contactless payments overseas through travel cards, as all such cards currently available in the market are equipped with the contactless feature.
