Chase Cards Are Joining the Contactless Payment Wave

First you swiped, then you dipped. Now, if you're a Chase cardholder, you can add tapping to your money moves.

The issuer is integrating tap-and-go contactless payment on all of its Visa credit and debit cards by the end of 2019, joining the ranks of other cards and payment providers that offer this functionality.

“Tapping to pay will help speed our customers through checkout with the ease and confidence of paying with Chase,” Abeer Bhatia, president of card marketing, pricing and innovation for Chase Card Services, said in a statement.

Using contactless payment can speed up the overall checkout process, since a quick tap of your card can be faster than swiping a magnetic stripe or dipping the card into a terminal reader. Both of those methods require a few seconds of delay before a card is approved. Chase notes contactless payments are also secure. As with a chip card, when you make a contactless transaction it will generate a one-time security code that protects your information.

What is contactless payment?

Any device equipped with technology such as near-field communications (NFC) can pass a signal to a similarly enabled terminal to make a secure payment. In addition to credit and debit cards, this technology is also used on key fobs, entry cards and mobile wallets on smartphones.

Chase already offers Chase Pay as a form of contactless payment via a mobile phone app. Other products offering tap-and-go payment include Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, select Mastercards and select Capital One cards. Several "wearables" and other connected devices allow contactless payments as well.

What does this mean for you?

Chase will begin rolling out updated cards to customers who have cards up for renewal or who just opened new accounts. Chase says Chase Freedom Unlimited® and Chase Slate® customers will be among the first to receive their new cards. The company expects that all of its Visa credit cards, including all co-branded cards, will have tap-to-pay functionality by the first half of 2019. Chase debit cards will come equipped with the tap-to-pay feature by the second half of 2019.

To find out when a specific contactless Chase card will be available, see the issuer's FAQ page.