France has never paid so much for its purchases by credit card

Although consumption bottomed out in March and April, the health crisis, unsurprisingly, changed our relationship with our bank cards to the detriment of cash. According to the Banque de France, data is shared by The Parisianhas become the bank card “THE Star of the Year”With “Two thirds of French respondents say they paid for their last transaction with a card.”.

Maximum contactless payment settlement

The declaration takes several elements into account. The first and perhaps most significant acceleration in 2020 is the increase in the contactless payment cap since May 11th. From 30 to 50 euros, this allowed the use of the card to be expanded to include a greater proportion of spending, taking barrier gestures into account, and supermarkets have benefited most from it. According to the CB Observatory, updated last October, the growth in bank cards at these merchants was around 41.1% compared to the second half of 2019.

According to the latest announcement by the Banque de France study, contactless payments by bank card accounted for 39% or more than half of bank card usage. With our European or international neighbors, the ceilings are often even higher (several hundred euros as in Canada), but France is still (rightly) concerned about the uncertainty of the method, which is the victim of fraudulent operations (especially in transports). In fact, contactless payment does not require user authentication to proceed with a transaction.

Step up in online payments and barrier gestures

The health crisis has now contributed more to the increasing use of our cards. On the one hand, the boom in online sales marked the economy in 2020, and companies like Amazon, but also fintech surfing the wave, were perfect witnesses. For these transactions, cash lost its representation, excluded from the entire digital economy. On the other hand, barrier gestures. Paying cash at the till, despite the protection, can be compared to non-compliance with health precautions.

“Cash withdrawals at ATMs have fallen by around 20% in volume and 10% in value since the beginning of the crisis.”said Thierry de la Bretèche, deputy director for fiduciary activities at Banque de France in Parisian. “This change in behavior should at least partially be maintained over time”he added, specifically qualifying the improbable medium-term disappearance while approximately “500,000 people without a bank account have no other payment method and we must remember the need to hoard cash as a precaution and keep it at home.”

Online banking outbreak

To follow this dynamic, online banks combine the advancement of neobanking and the tradition of traditional banking. We have seen many dematerialized institutions this year like Boursorama Banque completely revamped their offering to make their bank cards stand out.

They have become sexier, more approachable, and often more upscale, and have accelerated the tendency to change their name to names that are specific to banking offers rather than those of their issuer. For example, Boursorama Banque has definitely put its offerings for Visa Classic and Visa Premier for Ultim and Ultim Metal cards (Visa always) aside.

Traditional institutions today are split between the idea of ​​developing new, more secure bank cards, such as at BNP Paribas and Société Générale with dynamic cryptogram or fingerprint reading technologies, and the idea of ​​trusting new payment protocols. Cell phone, mobile phone.

The one that only accounts for a tiny part of the payments makes it possible to pay by smartphone with a virtual card generated by the bank. In institutions like Revolut and N26, this has become a real argument. Societe Generale started its own functionality at the beginning of July.