BLIK contactless – a novelty on the m-payment market
From July to August 2021, so mainly during the vacations alone, BLIK users made almost 200 million transactions worth almost PLN 27 billion. At the end of the third quarter, just under 7 million users were actively using BLIK. The most dynamic growth is observed in the number of BLIK phone transfers and transactions at payment terminals.
The BLIK banking service has shared with us, its users, a summary of its results for the third quarter of this year. As a result of the data from this report, we can confidently assume that this is the most recognizable brand in the online and mobile payment sector.
BLIK received 194 million transactions in the third quarter, which is 76% higher than a year earlier. So far, in 2021, the number of transactions made using the service is estimated at 523 million.
Over 65% of them were e-commerce transactions, almost 17% were phone-to-money transfers, less than 13% were terminal-to-money transfers, and over 5% were ATM withdrawals.
– Not only is the number of transfers to BLIK phones growing very quickly, but also the number of people who use them. The share of P2P transactions in the total number of all transactions made with BLIK is increasing quarter by quarter. We believe that BLIK quick settlements can become a dominant way of transferring money to each other – says Dariusz Mazurkiewicz, president of Polski Standardu Payments, the operator of BLIK mobile payment system.
Almost 9 million active users
The third quarter of 2021 is another year rich in successes, primarily due to further increases In this period, users made an average of almost 2.1 million transactions with BLIK every day. Best day indicated for the quarter details 2.7 million transactions. As it turns out, the average amount of a BLIK transaction is 133 PLN. The amount does not seem large, but keep in mind that this is an averaged result, and the nominal value of transactions for the third quarter period is almost twice as large as for the same period last year, as the increase is estimated at 80%.
The document also shows that 8.6 million active users are currently using the service. This is all the more surprising as there was an increase of 600,000 users compared to the previous quarter. This, of course, is preceded by the first quarter this year with 7.6 million users. As you can see, since the beginning of the year, BLIK has registered a growth of almost one million users. On an annual basis, the third quarter of 2020 resulted in 6 million active payers, which shows that in 12 months the number of users has increased by almost 3 million, which may be impressive.
PROXIMITY BLIK
In addition to BLIK's amazing performance, the report in question includes information that as of November 9 this year, six banks are making contactless BLIK available. These banks include: Millennium, mBank, ING Bank Śląski, PKO Bank Polski,Santander and Alior Bank.
The first of the banks to offer the new facility was Millenium
We got it! As the first bank we provide contactless payments BLIK in stationary stores in Poland and abroad. They can already be used by the first group of our customers, and soon more will follow. It is a breakthrough solution on the international market. https://t.co/6UyW55WQ34
— Bank Millennium (@BankMillennium) July 26, 2021
. – We are very pleased that to the wide range of payment methods we offer joins contactless payment BLIKIEM. BLIK has long conquered the hearts of Internet users and is now the most popular payment method on the network. Now, we hope, it will settle for good in stationary stores and service points not only in our country, but also abroad, wherever Mastercard payments are accepted. We tried to design the solution in such a way that not only using it, but also activation itself is as user-friendly as possible said Halina Karpińska, Director of Electronic Banking Department in Bank Millennium.
How does contactless BLIK work?
Technology based on payments using NFC communication, without which we will not be able to perform such operation on our smartphone.
NFC, in a nutshell, is a way to transfer files from one device to another by reducing the distance between them. It differs from Bluetooth in that it does not require lengthy setup for pairing and connecting devices and time-consuming data transfer. NFC is perfect for quick transactions that do not require a lot of space, and payments are one of them. Contactless BLIK means that the application must be configured and structured for NFC connectivity.
What are the advantages of the new functionality?
Contactless payments can be processed in this way both in Poland and around the world, and in order to use it all we need is a smartphone with NFC and a bank account, which supports Blik application. For now, as a source of payment we can choose only the account number, but in the future it will be possible to connect different payment cards, but what is most interesting, payments can be collected using Messenger!
Is it safe?
BLIK is an application that offers integrated security with our own on the device. Therefore, the safety of using this application depends, as always, on the users themselves and the prudence with which they handle payments. The ability to choose is important, as we can set whether we want to unlock the phone screen with biometrics or PIN before each payment.
"Deployment"
In order to use proximity Blik you need to launch an application of a bank which supports it. After entering BLIK payments, choose the option of contactless payment. Then you need to enable secure screen lock. The bank's app warns that this setting should be left on to ensure security against the operation of the enabled service. Next, we will be redirected to a message about enabling NFC, and then the app will ask us to set it as the default for contactless payments. A device configured this way can be applied to a payment terminal.
It looks like in the future we will not have to remember passwords and cards for payments at all, which has its benefits, although one can quibble about the negative consequences of this phenomenon. Contactless Blik – bring the phone close, unlock it and you're paid.