Since returning to the states from china, I've been happily surprised that I can just tap my credit card to pay at many terminals. This still pales in comparison to austrailia, where this tap to pay seems to be ubiquitous.
For example, Apple Pay works great at Whole Foods. I use it every time. Other people in line painstakingly pay with credit cards, despite holding an iPhone in their other hand. The new chip cards take longer to process, even, 5 seconds or so.
Yeah but no. Come in the UK and you'll see that mobile payments are seeing widespread acceptance. I can go weeks without having to pull my Debit or Credit Card.
I'm in Ireland and hate carrying change so I use my phone all the time to pay, I only end up going to the ATM ~ once every 2 weeks or so.
Some people working in shops aren't used to paying with phones yet but you just tell them it's the same as contactless card and it works out fine.
Ever since I've been back to the states from china, I've used the ATM only around four times in the last year. My wallet also feels much more empty given the density of $20 bills over 100 RMB notes.
USA != the west. Paying by credit card is pretty uncommon in large parts of Europe. Most stores I frequent don't even accept credit cards. But debit cards with pin&chip and now wireless NFC pin&chip is very popular.
I hardly ever use cash, but the only reason I have a credit cards is for some US webshops.
I have only managed to use Android Pay a couple of times and the store that I did that with has removed it since then.
When it works, it is approximately the same level of annoyance as a credit card. When it fails, it is so much worse. I just don't see it taking off here in its current form.
Even worse, I think, is the proliferation of mobile app payments. Where you have to download the specific app for the business. (Burger King is IMO the worst offender - you cannot order in their app, but you can pay in it, so rather than support NFC and not wasting 50MB of space on my phone they make me download their proprietary junk and reenter my card info again just to avoid having to swipe the card...)
You have got to be kidding. Handing my card over to someone who disappears off with it? Those bloody awful faux-pens to sign on an LCD? That's your idea of easy to use?
Paying for things in the US feels like the stone ages.
But the sweet spot of <$50 transactions that require neither PIN nor signature (admittedly, this depends on the retailer) is really quick and easy. It is certainly much quicker than pulling out my phone and fiddling with the poor feedback in Android Pay.
Does this bother you? If your system can't handle this scenario then it is flawed.
>Those bloody awful faux-pens to sign on an LCD?
Not required in lots of locations unless it exceeds some value.
>That's your idea of easy to use?
Yes, I put a card in a machine, wait 5-10 seconds, and take it out. Done.
In a sit-down restaurant, the waiter drops off the check towards the end of the meal. I put my card in the holder and he grabs it and returns with a receipt to sign and write a tip amount. Not quite as fast as the waiters who have payment processors they walk around with like in Europe, but close.
Trust me, living here feels that way too, except everyone is at pains to tell you that it's the greatest in the world. And don't get sick!
The developed economies were already mostly "cashless." Very little cash has run though most malls, hospitals, schools or even supermarkets for decades already. "We hqave something good enough" is definitely at play.
That said, we need to keep in mind that financial transactions has been close to an airtight oligopoly for a long while. 2 CC companies have run the show for decades. They have very deep "moats" with spikes and crocodiles. One of the big one is the strict regulation, which heavily favours established incumbents.
It's yet to be seen whether China (+India, etc.) will develop a dynamic market for financial services in their cashless economies, once the dominant services become established and entrenched.
Cash share of payments in Germany and Austria (by volume) were still >80% just a few years ago, see p.38 of https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpwps/ecbwp1685.pdf
BTW used to work for a company that did telecoms consultancy in Africa and in Angola they preferred microwave for trunk links as it was harder for the rebels to damage.to
I can't really let that comment stand. Cash transactions go way faster than credit card transactions in my experience. (They'd go faster still if prices were posted with tax included, but that's a different issue.) Hand over the card, swipe the card, hand back the card, wait for the receipt to print, get a pen, sign the receipt, hand that back VS Hand over the money, count the change, hand that back.
Don't get me wrong, I can imagine how credit card interactions should be able to go faster. But in practice, they don't. If anything, they've gotten worse lately, since the chip cards take a while to do their processing (and then you still need to sign the stupid LCD screen with the terrible stylus).
Mobile payments haven't taken off in the US because the big players are all fighting to the death in the space.
I suspect that the space was equally as fractured until the big players in China simply got the "Party Blessing" and that was the end of the discussion.
In some countries (I've seen it in Canada and Sweden) there are machines that deal with the change for you (this is separate from a self-check out machine). They either deal with just the coins or with notes+coins, without any cashier interference
Thus, in the US, I suspect that mobile payments haven't taken off as much because they are only very slightly faster to use than a credit card, as opposed to cash, which is much slower with people counting out amounts and cashiers counting out change. Before Android Pay came out and there was Google Wallet, I tried using Google Wallet but was super disappointed - it failed about 5% of the time, where my credit cards almost never failed. Lately, though, I've started using Android Pay and I've been really impressed. Just one tap with my phone and it's done, and it's very reliable. Still, though, it's really only slightly faster than swiping my credit card, especially for small amounts where a signature isn't required.