After releasing a report that ranked New Zealand as one of the world’s top digital nations, Mastercard is now calling on retailers to lift their game around contactless payments.
In conjunction with the Australasian Acceptance Development Fund — made up of four New Zealand banks, ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac — Mastercard has launched a campaign and a website, www.switchonnz.co.nz, that “profiles Kiwi businesses talking about how contactless technology is making a real difference to their businesses,” to “encourage retailers to ‘Switch On’ to the benefits of contactless payments.”
Mastercard says its monthly Perceptive Omnibus survey of 1007 New Zealanders conducted online in December 2016 used a nationwide sampling framework with the result weighted to Statistics New Zealand census gender, age and location data. It found more than half using contactless technology at least once a week, up 12 percent on last year.
Mastercard country manager for New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, Peter Chisnall, said consumers were putting pressure on retailers to adopt contactless payment technologies.
“Consumers are choosing contactless payments as their first option, and this demand is encouraging retailers to make the technology more widely available,” he said.
“Thirty eight percent of New Zealanders think retailers need to do more to embrace new payment innovations. A third of respondents said they get frustrated when retailers do not have contactless technology enabled.”
He added: “For retailers, the benefits aren’t just faster queues, reduced cash handling and more efficiently serving customers, but also paving the way for emerging payment methods like mobile payments and biometrics that will soon become mainstream in New Zealand.”
• In mid July the Fletcher School at the US’s Tufts University released its Mastercard sponsored 2017 Digital Evolution Index. It ranked New Zealand as one of the world’s top digital economies in terms of high levels of digital development and a fast rate of digital evolution.