Everything, everywhere: how plug-and play technology facilitates contactless payments

14.03.2022

Contactless payments are becoming the new standard for face-to-face payments. Efficient, convenient and hygienic touchless ways to pay enables people to conduct transactions by waving a payment card or other wearable device over a payment terminal.

These tap-and-go-payment methods eliminate the need for physical touch and had already started gaining traction prior to the pandemic. When public health concerns emphasised the need for social distancing, the use of contactless payments accelerated significantly. In fact, in some regions, tap-and-go adoption increased by 150% as consumers experimented with new form factors. Today, merchants around the world continue to adopt contactless payment technology in huge numbers, and by 2025 the industry is expected to grow to $18 billion.

Plug-and-play payment solutions will contribute significantly to this growth by offering manufacturers the ability to integrate cutting-edge payments technology into new or existing products, decreasing time to market and increasing cost effectiveness. For consumers, it will further boost choice and the attractiveness of new wearable technologies.

What value does it provide to manufacturers and consumers?

Today’s consumers are becoming increasingly reliant on using payment devices to pay digitally. Ditching cash, people want to pay using their contactless card, smart wristband or watch. While the payments industry already offers consumers the ability to do this, plug-and-play capabilities will expand options for digital payments even further, by making the manufacture and integration of payment solutions easier.

Soon, consumers will have even more choice for conducting secured, contactless transactions at any time and from any place. One day, devices may even make transactions automatically for us, such as automatically paying for fuel without us needing to leave our cars.

Contactless Payment Card
Contactless Payment Card
Contactless Payment Card

Plug-and-play solutions enable manufacturers to turn emerging ideas into real ways to pay, increasing competitive advantage by delivering a platform to integrate existing payment technology into new trends, such as wearables or greener payment technologies.

Addressing the challenges of dual interface card production

man paying contactless with smartwatch
man paying contactless with smartwatch
man paying contactless with smartwatch
Addressing the challenges of dual interface card production

Plug-and-play technology has the potential to quickly expand the contactless payments industry by using pre-certified security solutions to turn any number of objects into viable, trusted payment devices. Currently, ID1 form factor cards are standardised worldwide, based on EMV® Specifications. The challenge with newer form factors is that there is no standardisation, yet consumers still (rightly) expect highly-secured, convenient, reliable payments.

Selecting a plug-and-play solution that has already been certified saves manufacturers time and money and bypasses long, complex, and intensive processes for achieving compliance with global payment schemes. Pre-certified plug-and-play solutions that can be implemented easily into final production processes can enable a range of new, innovative and even luxury payment devices.

Consumers today have several expectations when it comes to modern payments. They want cards with state-of-the-art features, a high level of security, and that provide a variety of payment options. They also expect payment cards to be ecologically sustainable, technologically innovative, and to offer more value-added use cases.

Meeting these requirements while still enabling the fast and sustainable production of dual interface (DIF) cards presents a challenge. Plug-and-play technology helps address these challenges by supporting simple, efficient and cost-optimised production of robust DIF cards. This, in turn, enables maximum flexibility for innovation and delivers a higher return on investment.

Supporting optimised card production with plug-and-play solutions

Ultimately, plug-and-play solutions have the power to drive innovation to meet customer demand and support the production of high-quality, secured, and cost-optimised cards. Plug-and-play solutions providers that adhere to industry standards can deliver fast-to-market, ready-to-go payment card technology aligned with contactless EMV standards. Whether they are used in the production of DIF payment cards, wearables or new and emerging form factors, these plug-and-play solutions provide robust security and offer long-term sustainability across the entire value chain.

Contactless Payment Card
Contactless Payment Card
Contactless Payment Card

Advances in plug-and-play technology will also enable easier integrations across contactless payment devices. For example, eliminating the wired connection between the module and the antenna that is embedded in a payment card offers more robust, damage-resistant and easier to integrate into greener payment card materials such as wood or metal.

Since soldered connections are more difficult to produce at scale and harder for manufacturers to integrate into innovative devices, plug-and-play solutions with inductive coupling technology enable greater flexibility and provide a high-level of security ‘out-of-the-box’.

Coil on Module (CoM) technology is an example of how ready-made technology can help meet consumer expectations. CoM facilitates the production of extremely robust consumer payments cards that are less likely to be damaged with long-term use. By extending the lifespan of these cards, banks can meet customer demand to offer consumers a greener option that lasts longer and ultimately creates less waste. In the same way, plug-and-play solutions enhance banks’ abilities to adapt quickly to meet customer expectations.

Can plug-and-play technologies be trusted? 

Ultimately, plug-and-play security solutions are only as trustworthy as the security technology incorporated into their offering. Plug-and-play solutions that use a security controller, including certified software integrated into chip modules and fine-tuned inlays for seamless card production, give manufacturers the ability to quickly and easily integrate well-secured technology into existing or developing products, and to create customised value-added products for standard payments cards or multi-application cards.

In a fast-moving market where consumers are willing to quickly adopt and use new technologies, it’s more important than ever to establish trust immediately. Plug-and-play solutions will therefore play an important role in the future of payments, helping provide good security and reliability in every transaction, no matter how new the form factor the consumer chooses to use.

Hans-Jörg Frey
Hans-Jörg Frey
Hans-Jörg Frey

Author: Hans-Jörg Frey, Product Marketing Payment Solutions