SCA rules to boost mobile payments in the UK

Following the news that the Strong Customer Authentication rules launched in the UK on Saturday 14th September, Samuel Murrant, Senior Payments Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the change:

“The new EU rules will undermine the convenience of contactless card transactions, potentially providing an opportunity for mobile wallets to take a more prominent place in the market.

“The UK is a nation of contactless card enthusiasts, with 68% of consumers surveyed by GlobalData in 2019 reporting that they use a contactless card to make payments at the point of sale. The use of contactless cards is primarily driven by their convenience compared to cash and other cards, and introducing a point of friction (PIN entry) for transactions on a regular basis will reduce the convenience of these cards. By comparison, mobile payment options will appear more convenient, since the user never needs to enter a PIN.

“This measure does address consumer concerns about the ease of fraud on contactless cards if stolen or lost, but in doing so it curtails their main strength – convenience. We may see the deployment of smart payment cards with in-built biometric fingerprint readers in response to the SCA regulations, but it seems more likely that consumers that strongly value convenience in payments will instead move to mobile wallets.”

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