Mumbai, Jun 16 (IANS): Contactless payments witnessed a 6 times growth in India in the last three years and the highest adoption was observed in sectors like quick service restaurants, pharmacies, food, grocery, a new report showed on Thursday.

Contactless payments saw a tremendous surge in recent years, especially during the pandemic, and their contribution to total face-to-face (F2F) transactions grew by more than 6 times, from less than 2.5 per cent in December 2018 to 16 per cent in December 2021, according to a whitepaper by Visa and Worldline India.

Additionally, the adoption of EMV chip cards has been pivotal for the growth of contactless payments, aided by supportive regulations that increased the contactless limit in India to Rs 5,000 in 2021.

"We have observed that the key drivers of contactless growth -- availability, convenience, utility, and security -- will continue to aid adoption at scale as contactless cards become ubiquitous," said Ramakrishnan Gopalan, VP, Head of Products and Solutions, for India/South Asia, Visa.

According to Worldline India, while 25 per cent of all transactions at supermarkets were contactless in January 2020, these transactions rose to 31 per cent by January this year.

In 2020 and 2021, Delhi-NCR, Karnataka, Gujarat, and Telangana had the highest proportion of contactless transactions and penetration, across both debit and credit cards

"Coupled with the increasing merchant acceptance of contactless cards we are seeing not only in metro cities but in non-metro cities as well, we anticipate contactless payments to be a key driver of digital payments in the future," said Sunil Rongala, Senior Vice President, Strategy, Innovation and Analytics, Worldline India.

Through the pandemic, contactless payments recovered faster than other forms of face-to-face payment due to greater consumer ease and safety, the report noted.