User experience of utilising contactless payment technology in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

Contactless payments are being increasingly used with people demonstrating their interest in the payment technologyby waving or tapping their cards and devices at point-of-sale (POS) terminals across the world to make purchases. Eventhough the shift to contactless payments systems was already taking place before the COVID-19 outbreak, it is essential tostudy if the current crisis has accelerated this transformation. In this study, an online survey was used to examine the experience ofutilizing contactless payment technology in Saudi Arabia during the COVID-19 outbreak. We also investigated the factors thatcould affect this experience. The results showed that positive experiences in utilizing contactless payment technology have increased after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the study showed that health safety and hygiene were the mainreasons for using contactless technology for payment during the coronavirus crisis, while the security of transactions was the mainconcern in not using it for payments.

KEYWORDS:

• Contactless technology
• contactless payments
• COVID-19
• coronavirus
• user experience (UX)

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Bank Albilad Chair of Electronic Commerce (BACEC) for providing this research opportunity and the support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.