The National Payment Card System (NSPK), the operator of Mir cards, is considering abandoning the contact interface on new cards. This was stated by Sergey Bobrov, Head of Operational and Technological Support for NSPK projects.
According to Bobrov, today Russians are inserting cards into the terminal less and less often — in less than one and a half percent of cases. Almost all operations — 98.5 percent — are carried out using contactless technology. If the trend continues, the contact payment method may almost disappear by 2031.
It is emphasized that the NPSK is designing an architecture for the next decade.
The abandonment of the contact interface means that new cards will only work via NFC — a technology that allows you to pay for purchases by simply attaching them to the terminal. A similar transition has previously occurred in many countries: in the UK and South Korea, contact transactions have already become rare.
