Study by Cantaloupe and Michigan State University Shows Contactless Payment Transactions Soar

Cantaloupe, a digital payments and software services company that provides end-to-end technology solutions for the unattended retail market, partnered with the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University for a joint study on payment trends in unattended retail.

The results of the study show that contactless transactions at vending machines soared during the height of the COVID pandemic from January 2020 to October 2021, the time of the study.

The study saw the overall share of cashless transactions increase dramatically from 51 percent in January 2020 to 62 percent in October 2021 compared to cash transactions, which decreased from 49 percent to 38 percent in the same time period.

The rise in cashless payments overall is being driven by consumer adoption of contactless payments, or any payment method that uses either near-field communication (NFC) or radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to “tap to pay” — such as a credit or debit card with a chip, or a mobile wallet. The study found that from January 2020 to October 2021, contactless transactions had grown steadily month to month from 18 percent of total transactions to 43 percent of total cashless transactions overall.