Contactless payments: A safety measure that should be retained after 11 May

Our society will have to live with COVID-19 and adapt its habits in order to minimise the risk of any other pandemic… It has appeared that social distancing through safety measures is one of the most effective means of slowing the spread of the virus… Avoid kissing and shaking hands, wash your hands regularly, wear a mask in closed areas with a high density and, when buying, pay contactlessly.

It has been shown in a multitude of studies that banknotes which are exchanged regularly from hand to hand without ever being “washed” are an important vector in the transmission of the virus. This is why China, home of COVID-19, very quickly started cleaning up its used banknotes with the stated objective of limiting the spread of the coronavirus.

Without going into the details of each study on the subject, which more or less demonstrates the harmfulness of banknotes, it is common sense that our banknotes are simply dirty and that is why it is important to move from cash to digital.

In France, according to the European Central Bank, more than half of the daily transactions are still carried out through cash, especially the smallest daily transactions.

But thanks to innovative solutions like mobile payment terminals, developed by FinTechs such as myPOS, French merchants can accept all the main means of payment through contactless cards and simplify the financial management of their business due to a simple and intuitive mobile application.

Jean Beaubois, Chief Strategy Officer at myPOS, one of the European leaders in financial services dedicated to merchants, sheds light on its POS terminal with a touch screen. 

Without having to go to an agency (in order to achieve even further social distancing), in a few clicks, an entrepreneur obtains:

1. A mobile payment terminal that works across France, but also throughout Europe, which allows merchants to be as close as possible to their customers. myPOS offers the choice between 6 payment terminals with different functionalities in order to adapt to the specific needs of each sector of activity.
2. A simple and intuitive mobile application to manage your specially-created company account.
3. A debit card which allows merchants to have instant access to the money they’ve just collected with their payment terminal.
4. 60 specialised applications to help merchants in the commercial management of their business (invoicing, inventory management, fees, etc.).

The myPOS solution is free of installation and subscription fees; merchants are invoiced only according to their turnover in order to adapt as closely as possible to their level of activity, which is quite attractive for those who have seasonal activities such as pruners, skiing instructors, taxi drivers in tourist areas and others.

In addition, in order to be closer to French merchants, myPOS is physically present in Paris in order to offer a dedicated customer service, which is constantly available by phone or email.

Today, the fintech industry is looking to integrate even more services at the time at which a transaction is made. For example, myPOS has started to offer an integrated invoicing service to 100,000 merchants who already trust it in France and across Europe.

It is only by simplifying the intense life of French merchants that the financial industry will succeed in replacing cash with cards. The objective of myPOS is to become the number one choice of French merchants by offering them a simplified and high-quality financial solution that allows them to focus on what interests them most: “serving their customers”.

Furthermore, card payments with the “contactless” option are innovative, which makes it possible for customers to avoid typing their PIN on the keyboard of a payment terminal, which can be a source of contamination, too. In order to promote the use of “contactless”, Bercy, which has been very active in supporting small traders, has acted as a catalyst in order to increase the contactless payment ceiling from 30 to 50 EUR.

Tomorrow, I think that more and more French people will adopt 100% mobile solutions as a payment method as we are already seeing in Asia and Africa… ApplePay, for example, allows you to pay with your mobile or connected watch for any contactless purchase above 50 EUR.

Featured on: Forbes.fr