# Contactless

https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/contactless/

*Last updated: 2026-08-03*

Tap-to-pay over NFC, whether from a card or from a phone wallet. From the terminal’s point of view a contactless card and a phone are the same transaction; from the shopper’s they are the fastest way through a queue.

## Why it matters to a merchant

The reason queue length is now a payments question. Contactless changed the time per transaction enough that high-volume, low-value trades — coffee, convenience, transport-adjacent retail — reorganised their counters around it. For those merchants, terminal choice is partly a throughput decision rather than purely a cost one.

## Related terms

*At the counter*

- [Card present / card not present](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/card-present/)
- [EMV](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/emv/)
- [Merchant-presented QR / consumer-presented QR](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/merchant-presented-qr/)
- [Smart terminal](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/smart-terminal/)
- [MCC (merchant category code)](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/mcc/)
- [Magnetic stripe](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/magnetic-stripe/)
- [Consumer-presented QR](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/consumer-presented-qr/)
- [MID (merchant ID)](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/mid/)
- [Tap to phone (SoftPOS)](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/tap-to-phone/)
- [CVM (cardholder verification method)](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/cvm/)
- [Tip adjust](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/tip-adjust/)

- [All 74 terms](https://www.uniwebpay.com/glossary/)

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