The Green Sheet Online Edition
January 12, 2026 • 26:01:01
How to introduce new payment initiatives without causing public anxiety
The Financial Conduct Authority, which oversees financial markets, firms and consumer protection in the UK, signaled it will allow card providers to set the contactless payment limit for their customers. Now, on top of a thousand other existential threats, from ocean acidification to microplastics, anyone who finds a lost debit card could spend every penny you have in a single tap.
But there’s reason not to panic: while tap and go card transactions are limited to £100 a transaction, digital wallets authenticated on-device have had unlimited contactless payments since their inception. However, there’s been no meaningful increase in contactless fraud.
In fact, street robberies are going down, which is not what you’d expect if every stolen phone were a veritable goldmine. Contactless fraud only accounted for £41.1 million/$52.2 million in fraud losses in 2024 out of £1.17 billion/$1.49 billion, or 3.5 percent. Not to mention the FCA believes, based on industry feedback, that most card schemes will keep the £100/$127 limit.
It seems panic over the increased limit was irrational, but it is understandable. Most consumers don’t read FCA press releases or check financial crime statistics, a fact borne out by crime being at a 30-year low..
Also, psychology has proven again and again that human beings are emotional before they are rational. Everyone, from regulators to payments companies, needs to work with that instead of ignoring it. So, how do we move payments forward without scaring away the people we want to help?
One deep root of this anxiety is the feeling that financial technology keeps moving faster than people can sensibly track. Every year brings a new system, a new rule change, a new security standard. For consumers, especially those who don’t follow industry developments, it can feel like the ground beneath them is constantly shifting.
The irony is that most of these changes are designed to make life safer and simpler, yet they land as uncertainty. The gap between industry intent and public perception has rarely been wider. Before any discussion about limits or fraud rates can land, the industry has to reckon with this widening gap. If customers feel blindsided, their instinctive response will always be to resist.
Why new initiatives trigger anxiety
History has a habit of repeating itself. When contactless payments were introduced in 2007, the £10 limit was described as reckless. Each subsequent increase—£20 in 2012, £30 in 2015, £45 in 2020, and £100 in 2021—was accompanied by warnings that fraud would explode. None of those spikes arrived. Instead, adoption soared, transaction values climbed and fraud remained proportionally tiny.
But consumer anxiety doesn’t vanish with positive evidence. Money carries an outsized psychological weight. Behavioral science tells us people are loss-averse: the pain of losing £100/$127 feels far greater than the pleasure of gaining the same amount. In payments, that bias skews people toward overestimating the likelihood of fraud and underestimating the protections in place.
Research from What SMEs Need From Their Payments Provider underlines this. Nearly half of consumers said they believe small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) should have the same payment technology as large companies.
One third admitted they avoid SMEs if they think fraud protection is lacking. Many are prepared to trade speed for reassurance: convenience matters, but not at the expense of perceived safety. The insight here is clear. Innovation in payments will fail if it doesn’t take account of these anxieties.
A related point often missed in policy debates is that consumer trust is cumulative, not transactional. People don’t form their views on safety based on one announcement. They build their sense of risk from every payment experience they’ve had: the time a card was declined without explanation, the shop that required an unexpected PIN entry, the friend who had to cancel their card after a suspicious charge.
These moments accumulate into a personal mental model of how payments work; anything that sits outside that model feels automatically suspect. That’s why every new development must be introduced with careful framing rather than assuming consumers will intuitively understand its logic.
What the FCA move really means
The FCA’s shift is not an invitation to reckless spending. Limitless contactless does not mean limitless risk. Instead, it recognizes that digital wallets have operated with no fixed ceiling for years, protected by biometric authentication. Leveling the playing field between wallet-based payments and physical cards isn’t radical; it’s logical.
It also signals maturity from the regulator. By handing responsibility to card providers, the FCA is acknowledging that the industry can balance risk and innovation without constant intervention. That should be read as trust, not negligence.
For SMEs, the implications are particularly positive. Payment friction is often more than an irritation; it is a commercial obstacle. If customers hesitate at the till because they fear a high-value contactless transaction won’t work, the result is longer queues, awkward conversations and sometimes abandoned purchases. Removing that ceiling allows smaller businesses to focus on serving customers rather than managing arbitrary limits.
But trust won’t automatically follow. Consumers need reassurance before they embrace change. Reassurance requires more than a single message delivered at launch. It needs repetition, consistency and visible proof. A consumer who hears once that liability sits with the bank may still doubt it the next time a scary story appears in the media. Confidence comes from seeing a system operate reliably over time.
There’s a lesson here from other sectors: cybersecurity firms don’t rely on one-off disclosures; they issue continuous updates, advisories and clear explanations of how threats are mitigated. Payments needs the same drumbeat of communication, not reactive statements issued only when anxiety is already spiraling.
A framework for anxiety-free innovation
If payment providers, policymakers and merchants want to ensure this shift delivers genuine benefits, they must lead with empathy. People’s fears are not irrational in their own minds. A parent worrying that a lost card could be drained in minutes is expressing a basic human instinct to protect resources. Meeting that instinct with dismissal deepens resistance.
Transparency is the next essential ingredient. Fraud monitoring, liability frameworks, tokenization and biometric checks all exist to protect consumers, but they are rarely explained clearly.
I doubt that 90 percent of the public could explain one of them accurately, which is partly because they are systems that run in the background and partly because the payments industry doesn’t explain them well. If customers do not know what safeguards apply, those safeguards might as well not exist in their eyes. Education is equally critical. Leaving the press to shape the story all but guarantees sensational headlines. Industry stakeholders must do more to tell their own story, showing not only how fraud is contained but also how liability typically rests with the bank, not the individual.Finally, a constructive approach is needed. Risk concerns should not be brushed aside. Providers should respond with “yes, and…” solutions. This approach also helps prevent the perception that the industry is either complacent or defensive.
When providers openly acknowledge risk, they establish credibility; when they immediately follow that acknowledgement with concrete mitigation steps, they establish authority. It’s a far more effective strategy than insisting everything is safe. Safety is never absolute, and consumers know it. They want honesty paired with competence: an industry that admits challenges and then demonstrates it is equipped to manage them. Yes, fraud is a risk, and here are the detection systems we run 24/7. Yes, losing a card is frightening, and here is how liability protection ensures you will not be left out of pocket.
Industry responsibility
The FCA’s move reflects confidence in responsible innovation. It suggests payments technology has matured enough to handle greater flexibility. But trust comes with responsibility. Providers must keep fraud frameworks modern, updating monitoring, machine learning and consumer protection rules as behaviors evolve.
SMEs stand to gain the most from reduced friction. Less time spent managing awkward conversations at the till means more time serving customers. When people feel safe as well as served, they’re more likely to support smaller businesses and keep local economies strong.
The principle is simple: progress and protection must go together. Payments innovation only works if it acknowledges human anxieties and addresses them directly.
Moving forward
The FCA’s decision to allow providers to set their own contactless limits should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. It raises the same question every payment innovation has raised: how do we push forward without spooking the very people we are trying to serve? The answer lies in empathy, clarity and trust. By recognizing consumer fears, explaining safeguards plainly and committing to ongoing education, the payments industry can ensure innovation is welcomed rather than resisted.
Now is the moment for providers, regulators and SMEs to work together in building a payments environment that is modern, safe and confidence-inspiring. Progress will not be measured in the size of the limit, but in the depth of trust consumers feel when they tap. 
Scott Dawson, head of sales and strategic partnerships at DECTA, is a highly motivated and results oriented individual with 20 years of experience within the payments industry. Previously, he served as commercial director at Neopay. He has also held fraud management positions at PSI Holdings and Neteller, before becoming senior fraud manager and then business development manager at ClickandBuy, which was acquired by Deutsche Telekom. DECTA provides end-to-end payment infrastructure, from acquiring to issuing and processing, but unlike other players in the crowded payments marketplace the company offers bespoke-as-standard solutions aimed at making payments accessible to everyone. Contact Scott via LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/scott-dawson-uk.
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