I love McDonalds, I know I shouldn't. Sorry for the irrelevant post, we can't even try Apple pay yet in the UK. Out of interest though is Apple Pay the only contact less payment in the U.S.? When I visited last year everywhere seemed signature only, and I managed to get my card ripped off, presumably when a waitress took it. Anyway I believe we will get Apple Pay at some point so looking forward to paying for McDonalds with my watch, very futuristic.
Nope. Google has Google Wallet, which has been around for a few years but hasn't been used much. Samsung is rolling out its own payment system literally called S Pay because Samsung. I think there's another one that used to be called Isis and for some totally unknown, cray cray reason changed its name to Softcard.
More and more stores are beginning to accept contactless payments. The vending machines at work just started accepting them and credit cards a week or so ago. I think merchant support will slowly increase as everybody upgrades their POS hardware to accept chip and PIN cards later this year. After a few bad data breaches, the banks over here are finally being forced to catch up with sanity.
The problems that remain are still not all banks seem to be aboard -- my credit union is lagging like crazy, which should be expected I guess since their mobile app hasn't been stylized for iOS 7. But even worse is despite the long list of stores that accept Apple Pay, McDonald's is really the only one that has an extremely high volume of transactions. You've got big stores like Macy's on the list, but there isn't a Macy's around every corner.
What will really push contactless into the mainstream is when major grocery stores, Walmart and Target start accepting contactless payments. Those are the type of stores where I make most of my transactions. Some other food chains like Burger King, Wendy's and Chick-fil-A would help, as well as more gas stations. But grocery, Walmart and Target will be the tipping point.
Also I'm hoping a future update will allow us to use cards like the Starbucks gold card for contactless payments. I haven't had to carry my actual card with me in forever thanks to Passbook. But contactless would be much easier than hoping the sun isn't making the barcode too hard to read.