Plus, feels more secure since you need to authenticate, vs anyone with your card can just tap it. (sure, usually you are not liable if you report lost credit card quickly)

What I'd really like to see next is for proper electronic receipts to be transferred to the phone, vs just the transaction total.

Plus, if you lose your card/wallet it is a pain to change numbers everywhere. While you don't need to do that if you lose your phone as real card numbers are not stored in the pay apps. Besides whoever finds the phone needs to go pass your lock screen to get anywhere near that.

Even better, in the country where I live, almost all debit cards have a number and a Cv2 code. So you can pay online at any place that accepts credit cards.

Transactions are free and instant. Within a second of paying I can see the transaction in the mobile app of my bank. Hell, it sends notifications for every transaction if you want.

You don't have this in every country?

Regarding safety: contactless only works for rather small sums. Anything above that requires a pin.

Your credit card number is never seen by the merchant. A lot of credit card thefts are done by employee's lifting the card number details during a transaction[1]. With Google Pay / Apple Pay the credit card number is replaced with a one time token that is only valid for that transaction.

[1]https://youtu.be/qgu2NVrfRV4?t=44s

Though some transactions on the internet can be done without them but that's rare and diminishing, and that probably not possible for the contactless cards

Then add that you don't need to carry a wallet if you have phone payment. Throw your phone in a sleeve (or use a watch!) and go running, stop for your smoothie on the way home.

Finally, since it's a phone I can call it when it's missing or my watch will tell me if it's in the Uber I just got out of. Even works when intoxicated!

https://embeddedsecuritynews.com/2017/06/romanian-lender-int...

To use my credit card I'd have to get my wallet out, find the right card, drag it out of its slot, etc. To use my phone I reach into my pocket, grab the only phone-shaped thing in there, and while moving it towards the terminal put my thumb on the sensor. Takes far less time.

But in the US paying with card is crazy "slow," especially with the new chip.

Does anyone know why this is?

Chip cards have been widespread in Europe for over a decade (in some places they've been around over 20 years). As pleasantly convenient as the new tap cards are, I've never found chip to be slow as long as I can remember. Sometimes a wireless terminal will have momentary connection problems but this is rare enough to be acknowledged by the shop as a clear technical fault and apologies given for the delay.

E.g. at Aldi here (Southern Germany) paying with card including entering the PIN isn't really slower than paying cash (and the Aldi cashiers are crazy fast in handling cash). At other stores the card terminals seem awfully slow, though.

I’ve been assuming this is some new, unoptimized codepath kludged into a legacy system because it’s very common but doesn’t seem to affect new products – e.g. Square systems are always a fraction of a second.

The one part I can’t explain is why at the subset of places which support both NFC and chips, the NFC transactions are at least as fast as magstripe when the chip transactions are so much slower.

I can imagine it being related to internet connection speed if it was a minor delay, but people seem to describe really significant delay, even in major US cities where you'd imagine that shouldn't be a problem.