The £100 Contactless Limit Is Gone: What It Means for UK Businesses

Since October 2021, we’ve been used to £100 being the magic number for contactless card payments. Stay below it and, in most cases, you simply tap your card and go. But go above this limit, and you need to authenticate the payment with your PIN. 

But after five years, that £100 ceiling has now gone. You might be wondering why, and how your payments stay safe as a result. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about this change and how it might impact you.

What's actually changed

You might be hearing about this change for the first time, and if so, let us explain it to you from the top. On 19 March 2026, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) removed the £100 contactless limit as a fixed, industry-wide rule. And yes, while this is now a few months in the past rather than breaking news, you might have missed this change, and you’re not alone. This switch hasn't necessarily been massively visible day-to-day, since most banks have kept things running much as before, and here’s why.

Rather than raising £100 to some other number, the FCA has decided to move away from setting a single ceiling altogether. Banks and payment providers with strong fraud protections can now set their own contactless limits, rather than everyone following one fixed figure. This means your contactless limit could be different from someone else's, depending on which bank issued your card.

So while the headline is "the £100 limit has gone," the reality is a bit more nuanced, and worth understanding properly, regardless of whether you're the one taking the payment or the customer doing the tapping. 

A quick history

The £100 limit hasn’t always been the norm. This threshold arrived in October 2021, when the FCA increased the regulatory contactless threshold from £45 to £100, giving shoppers much more room to tap for everyday purchases.

The cumulative limit got a boost too, rising from £130 to £300. The cumulative limit works as a running total across consecutive taps (and some banks still do this). Once you hit your bank’s limit, you're asked to enter your PIN once, and the running total starts again from zero.

Here’s an overview: 

• £30: pre-pandemic

• £45: April 2020

• £100: October 2021

• No fixed, official limit: March 2026

Why remove the limit now?

You've probably noticed that the way we pay has changed a lot, quickly. Contactless used to be for small, everyday purchases, such as a coffee, a sandwich, a couple of items from the shop, where entering a PIN felt like overkill. But now that contactless payments are the default method of payment, the distinction has largely faded. 

In just a few short years, our go-to payment method has changed drastically. In 2015, 45% of payments were completed with cash. Here are a few numbers that really show the scale of this shift:

• Cash now accounts for under 10% of UK payments, down from 45% a decade ago

• Contactless makes up 76% of debit card transactions and 66% of credit card transactions

• The FCA reports almost 1.6 billion contactless transactions were made in November 2025 alone

Here’s something else to keep in mind: £100 buys a lot less than it did in 2021. A meal out for a group, a weekly grocery shop, or a visit to a high-street retailer can easily cross that line. 

Can customers pay over £100 with a tap now?

Potentially, yes; but don't assume every £101 payment will suddenly go through contactlessly. 

The FCA removed its ceiling, but it hasn’t forced banks to remove theirs. This means that each bank will have its own set of rules, so two customers can have genuinely different experiences at the same till. If you’re concerned about how your payment experience will change, reach out to your bank or check out your bank’s official webpage for more information. 

Will this actually change much for your business?

This is the question most on your mind, and the answer to this question is largely wrapped up in the type of business you run. Here’s a rundown:

• Low average spend: There will be little change for businesses like coffee shops, where purchases rarely reach £100.

• Higher average spend: Restaurants and retailers may notice more of a difference, where three-figure transactions are far more normal.

For the higher-spend businesses, higher contactless limits could gradually remove a small, familiar hiccup at checkout: no more tapping, getting declined, then switching to chip and PIN. Of course, this change won’t be completely transformational; one transaction won't transform your day, but on the other hand, if you multiply that across a busy shift or a long queue, you’ve got yourself a smoother process.

If you want to understand what's actually happening behind each transaction, the Epos Now Business Owners' Guide to POS Payment Methods covers how card and other POS payments get processed.

What about Apple Pay and Google Pay?

Part of why a single card-based limit made less sense is that the physical card isn't the whole story anymore. A lot of people pay with their phone instead, and the UK actually leads the world for it: 67% of people here use Apple Pay in-store, the highest adoption rate of any country. 

Here’s something worth noting: digital wallets were never bound by the £100 limit in the first place. Since Apple Pay and Google Pay authenticate the payment on the device itself, using your fingerprint, face, or passcode, they've always been able to process higher-value transactions without needing a PIN at the till. In a sense, the card is only just catching up to where wallets have been all along. 

Since we are already on this topic, why not check out our guide on accepting Apple Pay and Google Pay?

Does a higher limit mean more fraud risk?

It's a fair question. If your card gets lost or stolen, doesn't a higher limit just mean someone could spend more before it's noticed? Not really. Banks only get this extra flexibility if they've got strong fraud controls in place first, so you're still refunded in full for any unauthorised payment, and most cards still ask for a PIN after around five taps or £300 spent, whichever comes first. On top of that, real-time monitoring runs behind every transaction to flag anything unusual, so none of this is something you or your staff need to think about. So, relax. There are plenty of systems in place to keep your money safe, no matter how you pay.

Do you need a new card machine?

You won’t be needing a brand new card machine because of this change in contactless payments specifically. If your current setup accepts the payment methods your customers use and it works reliably, there's no need to replace it just because the rules have changed slightly.

That said, it's a good idea to reassess your stock regularly. Here are a few things that are worth double-checking:

• Can you accept contactless cards and popular digital wallets?

• Do your terminals suit how your staff actually serve customers?

• Are payments properly connected to your point-of-sale system, so staff aren't manually re-entering totals between the till and a separate card machine? That single step is a common source of friction (and typing errors) repeated on every sale.

Epos Now offers a range of card machines and payment devices, alongside Epos Now Payments, which integrates payment processing directly with Epos Now's retail and hospitality POS systems.

What should you actually do now?

The good news is, there's no need to buy a new-fangled system or make any drastic changes. For most UK businesses, there is nothing urgent to do. This change affects the flexibility available to banks and payment providers, but it won’t change your day-to-day operations as a merchant (or a customer, really). Even so, it’s a good idea to stay aware of changing payment practices. 

As a business owner, here are a few practical steps worth taking anyway:

1. Brief your staff: A declined higher-value tap isn't a broken terminal; it's likely just the bank's own limit or security check.

2. Check your own transaction data: If most sales are under £30, this change probably won't affect you much. If plenty of transactions sit between £100–£150, it's worth watching how banks apply their new flexibility.

3. Review the payment experience as a whole: Are you accepting the methods customers expect? Do your terminals suit your environment? Is there unnecessary manual work your staff could be spared? 

We're here to remind you that there's no reason to put up with a less than ideal checkout experience. If you're struggling with your current setup, we recommend taking a look at Epos Now's card machines to see what a smoother setup could look like.

Alternatively, if you're simply reviewing your setup, the Epos Now guide to making payments painless covers questions worth asking about fees, supported payment methods, card machines, and support.

The takeaway

For most of us, day-to-day, not much will actually change, whether you're serving customers or paying for your own coffee. Plenty of banks will likely keep things much as they are for now, and chip and PIN certainly isn't going anywhere. And it's worth remembering, if you run a business, you're a customer everywhere else too, so this affects how you pay just as much as how you get paid.

The real question isn't whether £100 becomes £150 or £200. It's whether your customers can pay the way they expect to, without unnecessary friction for them or your staff, because most customers haven't come into your shop, café, or restaurant excited about the payment step. The best checkout is the one they barely have to think about.