Since the NL IBAN signals with which bank you are banking anyway I can “disclose” that I am banking at INGbank in the Netherlands. Earlier this year this bank send me a new debit card with “contactless” payments activated.
As I have earned a relevant part of my business revenue in payments related projects over the years, and my very first project in this domain to be about new payment types based on contactless for the public transport sector I am maybe a little bit more sensitive to these type of developments. Everywhere I encounter a contactless enabled POS terminal I will happily draw my debit card and try it out.
My findings are quite odd and can statistically leave room for one conclusion only: up till now “contactless payments are not used by Dutch payers at all”.
Everywhere, and literally every time I use the facility the employee behind the counter is total stunned that this capability exists and is actually operational at his POS. Maybe 25% knew the facility was present the others did not even know it existed. If I may use the explanations of these counterparts as survey input I have been the first to use it at every location without a flaw since early this year.
The funny thing is that the first time I used it myself was in Portsmouth (UK) paying for a pub meal. And again there I was the first to use it… At least the person helping was aware of it which proved to be an exception.
Only once I had a negative experience: a POS returned a prompt saying something that I had not enough money available or about limits or something while the banking app proved at the spot this to be utter nonsense. I am not entirely sure what the exact text was which was displayed at the main LCD screen it self for all to see (including my kids, personal of the restaurant and a bystander who wanted to know why I was so enthusiastic in showing how you could pay contactless), for I got a serious anxiety attack by the prompt. Just presenting the card a third time proved the remedy…
I have encountered POS enabled for contactless mostly in restaurants; from small ones in the big city to trendy ones in small towns in the south, east and west parts of the Netherlands (NB I just did not travel up north). I encountered one or two POS that could have contacless but were not activated as such. POS penetration is developing pretty slow too for I have been able to use contactless for only a small fraction of all the debit card payments I have done over the last half year. (NB yet an other proof that if payment method is reliant on POS terminal of merchant this is a severe barrier for uptake of the new service.)
It is an odd experience to be the first to use contactless debit card at every capable POS again and again.
Update: Correction: contactless payments are used ….. but only by young people!