From now on, customers will be able to add a Bancontact Belfius or Banx card to their Apple Pay digital wallet, and will be able to use this function to shop at all stores that accept Bancontact contactless payments.
Bancontact is the most popular method of online payment in Belgium. Customers may pay either via a Bancontact debit card, or by scanning a QR code on their phone. Through the partnership, Belfius becomes the first bank to support Bancontact in Apple Pay.
Founded in 1996, Belfius is a state-owned bank. It launched the Banx app in October 2021.
Belfius is currently involved in difficult negotiations with Wallonia’s Regional Government over the renewal of the bank’s contract as the region’s cashier. Belfius has expressed concerns about the ballooning of the region’s debt due to the pandemic as well as recent floods, but also about the rise in popularity of radical-left party PTB, which aims for high public investment. The bank is thus seeking to slash the length of its contract to two years.
A survey by organisations including Bancontact and Mastercard, whose results emerged in 2021, found that the Belgian population is moving overwhelmingly towards digital payments. The study reported that the proportion of Belgians who had made at least one mobile payment in a store rose from 30% in 2020 to 35% in 2021. The payment method is largely the reserve of the younger generations, the sharpest increase in interest being from 16-24 year olds, a quarter of whom cited it as their preferred payments means. On the other hand, the number of smartphone owners who intend to use the device for payments in the future (and are not already doing so) rose from a quarter in 2020 to a third in 2021.
The study also had interesting results in other areas of digital payments. It found that over 70% of Belgians had used contactless card payments at least once, and only 13% preferred to pay by cash. The study also found, remarkably, that the older generations were those most drawn to contactless payments; while only 36% of 65-74 year olds paid contactless in 2020, that figure had spiked to 76% by 2021. The age group even reported greater familiarity with the system than their younger counterparts.
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