This week our colleagues in food published a report on how people like to pay in their stores. Contactless payments (the ones you make by tapping your debit card or mobile phone on a card reader) in our stores have trebled annually to 11 million transactions a month.
The Findings
- Customers on average shop with us 19 times over 3 months
- 65% of our transactions over the last year have been with cash
- 11 million contactless transactions in March 2016
- Average basket size using chip & pin £18.16
- Average basket size using contactless is £8.66
- 65% of shoppers think that in under a decade all they will need is their phone to pay for daily goods
“The new technology is perfect for convenience stores as shoppers buy fewer items and speed is important to them.”
Cheryl Marshall Co-op Retail CIO
Over the last year 65% of Co-op food transactions used cash, but it’s expected that contactless payments on cards and mobile phones will overtake it within the decade.
Our research found that average spend for contactless is £8.66, versus £18.16 using chip-and-PIN. What explains the gap? Perhaps security concerns with new payment mechanisms, or the increased familiarity of Chip-and-PIN over contactless methods. Or simply that many customers aren’t aware that the contactless payment limit was raised to £30 in September 2015. Research by payment systems manufacturer Verifone says that paying by contactless card is faster than chip and pin or cash, a strong pointer that contactless card and mobile payments will eventually be commonplace, making convenience shopping even faster and easier.
You can read our convenience reports in full here:
- The Way We Pay, April 2015 – full report, press release
- Consumers abandon the shopping list in favour of impulse buys, October 2015 – full report, press release.
- Back to the Future Co-op report marks 50 years of modern shopping, July 2015 – full report, press release
if this is the case why are we giving members cards and not a phone app?