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With reports showing Irish consumers are continuing to embrace contactless payments, Permanent TSB has been working on expanding its digital product offering.
Permanent TSB has become the latest bank to make Google Pay available to its personal and SME customers.
Last year, Bank of Ireland offered Google Pay to its customers. The online payments platform first arrived in Ireland in 2016 as Android Pay for KBC and AIB customers.
Permanent TSB rolled out ApplePay last year as part of its digital payments offering. The bank has also recently partnered with Irish fintech start-up CreditLogic to use its digital mortgage application platform.
According to Jeff Harbourne, head of personal banking at Permanent TSB, approximately 60pc of its current customers use Android phones and the bank expects “a very positive reaction to Google Pay from them”.
“Google Pay is an excellent addition to the payment options we offer our personal and SME customers. It is a further demonstration of our commitment to meeting our customers’ needs,” he said.
The feature is now available to all personal current account and credit card customers, as well as to SME current account customers with business debit cards.
Google Pay users will not be limited by debit cards’ €50 maximum limit for individual contactless transactions. Furthermore, customers with Permanent TSB’s flagship Explore current account will earn 10c cashback every time they use Google Pay to make contactless payments linked to their debit cards.
Popularity of contactless payments
Contactless payment methods continue to be very popular with Irish banking customers. According to Wakefield’s Visa Consumer Survey from June 2021, nearly three quarters (73pc) of Irish consumers said they planned to pay contactless wherever possible.
The Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) found similar results in its Q1 payments monitor report published in May. The report found that contactless payments among Irish consumers had increased by 62pc year on year.
Traditional banks have had to significantly expand their digital payments offerings over the past few years following stiff competition from the likes of digital challengers N26 and Revolut.
In January, four of Ireland’s banks – AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB and KBC Ireland – revealed plans to set up a new company called Synch Payments. The BPFI industry group was also involved.
The Synch Payments platform was billed as a user-friendly app to allow customers from the four banks to send money to each other. However, the competition watchdog, CCPC halted their plans for the time being. The project’s planners said at the time that they would continue to engage with the watchdog.
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