The first contactless card was introduced to the UK in 2007. While takeup was slow at first, by 2017 the number of bank-owned terminals accepting contactless was nearing 500,000. During the Covid pandemic, where contact was kept to a minimum, contactless use skyrocketed. Now 93.4 per cent of all shop transactions under £100 are now contactless.
This was accelerated by the UK launch of Apple Pay in 2015, Android Pay in 2017, and Google Pay in 2018. While the amount you can spend in one go has continued to climb: At first you could only spend £10 (2008) but that steadily increased to £15 (2010), £20 (2012), £30 (2015), £45 (2020) and then leapt to £100 in 2021, making it all the more likely your transactions never need chip and pin.
Spending money is more seamless than ever. This is pitched, naturally, as a solution – a way to make our lives easier and slim down what you need to carry. (My Gen Z colleague Kia said that she’s not used her card in at least two years, relying solely on Apple Pay for everything). And it’s hard to deny that everything is less hassle this way. When I pop out I only need my phone and have everything at the touch of a button.
But, in recent months I have been considering that perhaps the seamless nature of this has been detrimental to my spending. Is it really good to have such ease and speed when trying to budget and keep a lid on expenses? A recent paper based on data from a Chinese bank has found that people spend about 10 per cent more when using contactless, perhaps – if we’re being cynical – part of the reason why banks and retailers welcomed the technology.
I consider myself to be fairly good with money, mainly because I set my standards against my younger, more reckless self. But I’m not seeing that manifest in my account. I sat down at the end of last month to reckon with the fact I had once again just moved the same amount into, and then out of, my savings account. Why am I struggling so much to put away permanently?
Of course the cost of basic goods has gone up, as has my rent, bills and so on, but it was the small, thoughtless purchases and subscriptions that were really eating away at my income. The viral posts about somehow spending £14.52 on ‘nothing in particular’ have stopped being a joke. They were now undeniable consequences of my contactless actions. This is arguably the real sticking point of contactless for me.
So in an attempt to regain a semblance of control, I decided to spend a fortnight contactful – no contactless, no Apple Pay, no pay by swipe on Amazon or PayPal. Just me, my physical wallet, and hopefully a few more pennies to my name by the end of it.
I spent my first day setting some ground rules, and scrubbing every avenue of easy spending off my phone. I disabled Apple Pay, deleted all card data off my phone, and deleted the PayPal app. This was the majority, though not the entirety, of the admin needed. Next – an Oyster card.
If you live in London, look me in the eye and say you still know where your Oyster Card is. You can’t because you don’t, and neither did I. I was late for work because I had to dig it out, and then spent some time attempting to calculate how much I should top it up. According to my Oyster Card (a 2012 commemorative card for the Queen’s jubilee that I used to joke was my substitute ID; Hilarious) the last time I used it was September 2016.
I settled on £30, which I figured should cover the four days’ travel I’d need (although it was telling that I didn’t really have a grasp on how much I was spending weekly on travel). It felt foreign to be so conscious of the money I was spending and threw into sharp relief my attitude for the last few years where I’d use my Monzo bank account via contactless to travel, until that account ran dry and I’d have to guiltily transfer over some money out of my savings.
I always felt as long as I wasn’t in debt I felt like it wasn’t the end of the world, but I knew it was stupid to move money into my savings for only two weeks and then back again.
When I travel into work for the rest of those two weeks I feel smug about not spending money as I had already paid for it. The euphoria of ‘free money’ psychology is hard to beat and I realised I had been behaving like travel was free because of the delay in the charge showing up. Despite it always coming through I would look at my balance as though I had truly only spent 10p on my journey (Transport for London holds a pending charge of 10p and charges the full amount 24 hours later) and then feel like my silly spend was justified.
Things get more complicated when I have to book train tickets to Glasgow for an upcoming trip. In my rush to get on the same train as my friends I buy on my phone while lying on the sofa before realising the correct thing to do would be to have gone to the ticket office, or at least have got my card out. Instead I opted for PayPal and suppressed my guilt.
But my real contactless problem when it comes to spending is Little Treats. Despite trying to bring in coffee and leftovers for lunch whenever I was heading to work, or at least not falling for the overpriced convenience of Pret, I repeatedly found myself itching for a pick me up.
One of the first days that week that I’ve not spent any money, I needed to grab some groceries. In a fit of self-congratulation, I decided to add an Easter egg to my shop. What could have been a modest shop of loose potatoes, cherry tomatoes, and a lemon is now £6 more expensive. Having to use my PIN did nothing to stop this impulsive spend.
Other impulses were successfully curbed, though: When I left my desk without my wallet, I wasn’t able to buy an afternoon M&Ms pick-me-up (80p in the work canteen), and on a morning walk, I wasn’t able to buy a coffee (£3.20). The fact that I was forced to stop and think came in increasingly handy.
And one night I stopped myself spending £25 on a dry shampoo. My thumb twitched over it – it was billed as the best dry shampoo out there! – but I realised it would mean getting up from the sofa to go and find my card and pop in my details. I couldn’t be arsed and – unlike when I was younger and an avid online shopper I no longer remembered my details. I gave up, to a mixture of pride and frustration.
Another evening, when I was at home, alone and hungry, I decided I was going to order food. I put together an order of noodles, a side, and a fizzy drink that came to a hair-raising £30. I genuinely toyed with spending that money, but getting up to find my wallet was a bridge too far. Instead, I ate a lacklustre bagel for dinner. I felt good about it in a begrudging way.
By the end of the two weeks, I found it easier not to give into impulse. When I go to Boots to buy my expensive iron supplement, I find I can’t justify adding on a little skincare treat when I’m already spending £25 (that’s a fiver saved).
And when I go out explicitly in search of something to ‘treat myself’ during a long work day, I end up peeling away from the queue I joined at Gail’s. Instead of a cookie that I half wanted and a coffee I definitely didn’t need, I rooted out a KitKat I’d bought a few days earlier but forgotten about. Another £5 back in my pocket.
Not using contactless is annoying. Carrying a wallet feels cumbersome, especially when you get used to having your phone in your pocket. And it doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped all frivolous spending. Despite spending half a day cancelling subscriptions that I don’t use or are about to start charging, I miss one and watch £8 disappear unplanned. It also doesn’t stop people spending on your behalf – I find myself having spent £100 one day when my wife books tickets for us and her parents to go to ABBA Voyage.
In the end, I saved a hypothetical £70 in the week without contactless, the £30 on my Oyster card somehow covered the entire two weeks and I feel like I understand myself a little better.
For me, as I’m sure for many, spending is far less about the actual item than it is about impulse control and scratching a dissatisfied itch. Having even the smallest bit of friction forced me to question my choices and some, though not all, got written off. I still had an expensive couple of weeks, but when I look at my statement, I feel like I’m far less likely to be blindsided by my choices. That’s only a good thing, and I’m going to do my best to hold onto it.