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Contactless payments expected to increase in Bulgaria: Bulgarian Central Bank

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In the first half of 2021, 99.48% of the number and 99.68% of the value of payments at the POS terminal devices were made with cards, and the rest via mobile phone, mobile watch, etc. Although their share is still small, the number tends to continue to grow. This is clear from an excerpt from the data of the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) prepared for bTV.

It is expected that in 2022 the trend of increasing card payment transactions will continue - both on the POS terminals and on the Internet, according to the BNB. In the case of contactless payments, the growth in transactions is expected to be driven by those offered by payment service providers. These are applications offered in collaboration with major technology companies that allow secure contactless payment directly with a mobile phone or another portable "smart" device.
An additional impetus to this type of payment will be brought by the started offering of solutions for accepting payments based on the so-called software POS. These are applications that are installed on a mobile phone and allow the merchant to accept contactless card payments using NFC technology, turning a mobile phone into a POS terminal, the BNB predicts.



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