Knowledge Base
In our Contactless series across Europe, we have looked at a variety of countries, each at different stages of their digital payments journey. Whilst all have experienced big changes in consumer behaviour, much of it in response to the pandemic, the Nordic countries were already getting ready to say goodbye to cash before Covid-19 had even arrived.
In the dim and distant past, to change the channel on the TV, people used to have to get up off their seat, walk to the television, and press the button on the box. Then came the revolution, the remote control!
Eleven years ago, a senior payments executive called Alison Hutchinson joined a group of people with a unique idea. They could see that card payments were going to wipe out cash at the point of sale. A hundred years of customers dropping loose change in a collecting tin was in danger of disappearing. If only there was a way to enable people to donate a few pennies when they pay with their card.
In September, one of the great pioneers of computing, Sir Clive Sinclair, died. Despite the sniffy obituaries in many of the British papers about his less successful ventures, for many Brits of my age, he did something heroic; changing our lives by making us realise that computing is something open to everyone. Sinclair’s home computers took the digital world out of the academic and banking domain and put it in the hands of the masses. It’s hard to overstate the impact it had on the lives and careers of many of my generation.
A few months ago, I was walking past my local curry house when I saw that their neon sign was on the blink. It made me smile: now that, I thought, is some serious targeted marketing. Not only do they recognise that my name is Ian, but also that it’s late so I’m probably hungry... and they have created a whole new cuisine just for me! If only all small merchants had marketing that was as focused as that.
Cash payments have been in decline over the past decade, with contactless payment becoming the popular choice thanks to the convenience of a simple tap. This efficiency benefits both merchants and consumers, and since the COVID pandemic swept over the globe, the crash of cash has accelerated with most consumers seeing contactless as the ideal, ‘germ-free’ solution to the unsanitary business of passing change from one sweaty palm to another.