Contactless payment

Apple Pay makes its way to Bulgaria. The British fintech Monese has officially announced that it will start offering this service to its customers in 13 new countries, including ours.

Apple Pay gives you the opportunity to pay with your iPhone or Apple Watch by typing your card number in the special app. With the NFC chip you can pay anywhere you pay with a contactless card.

Cardholders for non-contact payments Mastercard and Maestro will now be able to cover up to leva 50 bills without entering a transaction approval PIN. The increase of the current limit of BGN 20 will come into force on April 12, the operator of these cards announced.

Bulgarian cardholders are very interested in the possibility to pay via their mobile phone, according to the mastercard MasterIndex 2017. According to the survey, two-thirds of the active cardholders in Bulgaria want to pay with their smartphone at a store by bringing the mobile device to a contactless terminal as well as online via a mobile application.

Nearly BGN 4 B have been spent with Bulgarian bank cards in 2015, showed the latest survey of a large card company.

The European consumers made more than 340 million contacltess payments in 2013, shows the data of Visa Europe. 

The sum spent via contactless payments increased threefold and reached EUR 453 M. 

The growth is explained with the increasing popularity of such type of payments.