COVID-19 下におけるキャッシュレス決済の影響

抄録

COVID-19 pandemic in Japan, the government recommends “cashless payment” to reduce contact opportunities.

However, in previous research, there is concern about contact between people and objects in the payment operation of some payment methods, and the authors questioned whether the promotion of cashless payments alone is necessarily safe. In this paper, the authors have identified and clarified the payment operation process of the four cashless payment methods (credit card, debit card, electronic money, and QR code) by field survey. The results of the study revealed that there is a challenge in converting credit cards, which account for 90% of the cashless payment market share, to contactless. We also analyzed the trends in the market before and after COVID-19 by text mining of newspaper article data to identify their impact. After that, the authors discussed the feasibility of contactless and made recommendations for its solution. The recommendations are that the installation of contactless terminals in stores is costly, and that it is important to have a government initiative to promote it. The importance of promoting contactless credit cards to protect the elderly, who are more susceptible to COVID-19 infections, was also discussed.