Many markets are witnessing an increase in contactless payments, but Poland and other East-Central Europe countries (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary) are definitely ahead of the rest of the world. Those nations are in the global top six when it comes to the popularity of paying contactless.

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Visa reported that the share of contactless payments using Polish cards in the total number of cashless payments at retail points in Poland has neared 85 percent, according to data collected by the company in late December 2018. - In the coming weeks Poland will become the first country in the world where you can pay contactless in every stationary retail point - says Jakub Kiwior, Visa’s general manager for Poland and Hungary.

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The company also pointed out that introducing contactless payments paved the way for mobile payments. According to the Digital Payment Study, almost 90 percent of Polish customers who have made contactless payments think that they will use their smartphone for payments within the next three years. Jakub Kiwior thinks that the key to the process of developing mobile payments is tokenization, which enables easy, safe and widespread access to new payment solutions - both ones that are already on the market and ones that will be introduced in the future.