Belgium Payments: Are Contactless Payments Leading to a Less Cash Tipping Point?

Leo Van Hove, from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), spoke at the World Banknote Summit last month about ‘COVID-19 and cash usage in Belgium: have we reached an inflection point?’

His talk was based on data from the annual Digital Payment Barometer survey of a representative sample of 1,181 people ¹. He compared the change in results between the pre-COVID early March 2020 and March 2021 surveys.

Before the pandemic, Belgium had the second lowest level of contactless payment usage in Europe, at 16%. The roll out of contactless cards started in the first quarter of 2018 and, by the start of the pandemic, 72% of debit cards and 50% of credit cards were contactless. By the same time in 2021 85% of debit cards and 70% of credit cards were contactless.