Tapping is contactless – but it’s soulless too

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.

Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.

Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.

And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.

Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.

Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.

And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?

Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.

Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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