Do contactless payments make us lonely?

They’re 10 years old this month, but ultra easy contactless encounters could risk more than just the bank balance

Contactless payments reached £23bn in the first half of 2017

What were you doing when you got handed the new £1 coin for the first time? Or the Monopoly-like polymer fiver? Chances are you remember.

Money, the physical, jingly, inherently valuable coin and note, holds a special place in our hearts, our childhood piggy banks and the folds of the sofa. But as the contactless payment turns 10 there’s little doubt that this most convenient of payment methods is toppling our stack of glinting pennies.

Payments UK, the trade association for the payments industry, has recently brought forward the point in the future when it projects that debit cards will overtake cash as the most frequently used method of payment to 2018 – three years earlier than expected – thanks to the remarkable rise of contactless payments.

There are now 111 million contactless cards floating around the country, and their use is expected to increase four-fold by 2026. By then, the hands-off transaction is set to account for one in every four transactions of any size in the UK.

There’s no question that easy spending makes for more spending. Endless studies have shown that we are more aware of our spending when we’re dealing in cash or even debit and credit card payments reliant on a PIN. Ask someone on the way out of the corner shop how much they spent via contactless and the chances are they can’t tell you.

In total, those amounts are starting to snowball. We collectively parted with more than £23bn via contactless cards in the first half of 2017 compared with a little over £9bn over the same period just a year ago, says Finance UK, the trade body for the finance and banking industry as a whole.

Indeed, for those who have grown up knowing nothing but the contactless world for transactions under £30, cash is quickly becoming antiquated and fiddly. Almost two thirds of 18-25 year-olds say they feel frustrated if they have to make purchases with cash, according to research by money transfer app provider Moneymailme.

But cut back on complex, drawn out transactions and the social niceties that come with it, and you could risk compounding everything from isolation in the elderly to poor maths skills in children.

“Some contactless transactions still mean talking to the person you’re dealing with, but with this technology you’re probably concentrating more on tapping in the right place than on looking the person in the eye,” said Claudia Hammond, broadcaster, psychologist and author of Mind over Money.

“We watch people to tell us the price of our purchases. In fact, we rely far more on lip reading in a busy shop than we realise, but with contactless you don’t need to know the price, you don’t need to hear it exactly.

“There’s also no need to make eye contact with someone to ensure you hand them money, with your hand and theirs coming out at the right time. The interaction of handing over some money and getting some change involves quite a lot of steps, some physical and some eye contact, and that goes with a contactless transaction. Handling money involves complex co-ordination, let alone the numerous ‘thank yous’.

“Add the fact that it’s far quicker with this kind of payment – with less chance to chat about other things – and this is contactless in more ways than one.”

This last point could be all important among those for whom buying the paper or a carton of milk may be their only human interaction for the day, not to mention that it would be a real shame if children who treasure the little stacks of coins in their infancy and then grow to use them to learn about adding and subtracting don’t get the experience of dealing in cash.

But while many of us could be accused of heralding any newfangled approach with reflections on simpler and somehow more human ways of spending and using money in times gone by, it may be that contactless is just an antisocial blip in the fintech timeline.

This summer, for example, the futurologist (and inventor of text messaging) Dr Ian Pearson predicted that contactless payments may shortly be usurped by “voice and gesture” – which sounds like an altogether more sociable approach.

“Contactless technology is a compromise, still needing to get your card close to a reader. Soon, people will complete a transaction just with a simple gesture and a few words,” he said.

“Gesturing towards someone and saying ‘Here is £13.46’ is quite enough to combine the voice and gesture recognition with the presence of your smartphone as electronic identification.”