I wrote
this post last night in the Chipotle thread that basically summarizes why NFC in the US is such a cluster. Until that changes, most people simply aren't going to bother with any NFC (or possibly even MST) based system.
In the US Apple was counting on the fact that because of new Visa regulations that went into effect in October 2016 all companies where going to have to upgrade their terminals. Almost all new terminals manufactured have the required NFC chips. In the US if a company does not have a chip terminal, Visa is holding the company liable for any fraud that occurs. Before last October as long as the signature on the credit card receipt matched the one on file with the card issuing bank, the company that took payment for the card would not be held liable for fraudulent transactions.
Part of the security in the new chip based card (and Apple Pay) is the actual account number is not transmitted to the retailer. A one time use number is sent instead. This makes it very difficult for companies to store your credit card number and develop a lifetime purchase history for you. What Apple was not counting on was that this purchase history data was so important to the retailers that they would decide to accept the liability shift for fraudulent transactions instead of giving up this purchase history data. Even when the retailer has upgraded the terminals they are turning of the chip reader and the NFC capabilities to preserve your purchase history data.
The deadline was October 2015, not 2016. Also, a lot of places have chip disabled because they haven't been certified to run those transactions yet, not because of customer data collection. (If they didn't want to enable either, why bother spending the money buying the terminals?)
This the main reason WM doesn't like Apple Pay, they can't track you when you use it because every time you pay, the retailer gets a random token and not your CC#.
Walmart famously
hates Visa/MC. While Walmart Pay lets you use a CC (probably because of customer demand), I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually add an ACH option in the future and incentivize people to use it.
Where do you live where only Walgreens has NFC? All Starbucks stores accept Apple Pay now, all McDonalds, most Subways, a bunch of other fast food places, various big retailers...it’s more likely a location accepts it than doesn’t at this point. And most small businesses accept NFC, at least in New England (that includes Square).
Even if the merchant theoretically does accept Apple Pay, good luck getting a lot of these places to let you use it. By the time I walk people through running it, I might as well have given them my card.
Walmart and CVS don't take ApplePay because each sees it as less expensive to have their own payment system. Perhaps if NFC payment become truly popular in the U.S. they will have to change their strategy. But for now they have no incentive to turn on NFC payments or install NFC consoles, as the case might warrant.
It still costs a fair bit to develop something from scratch. However, as noted above, their own systems do eventually open the possibility of bypassing Visa/MC entirely.
What I don't get... you can pay in the US with chip + pin.
Why would you go through the trouble of scrolling through screens or folders, launch an app, scan bar code and pay .. instead of insert debit/credit card and enter pin code or even easier... hold card next to reader and let NFC handle the rest (you don't need an iPhone for wireless transactions, provided there's NFC on the banking card).
Welcome to the future.... QR codes ?
Contactless cards are seen as highly insecure in the US; most banks will never implement them as a result (though I could be wrong). The few that do are basically on an opt-in basis.
Also, you joke about the QR code thing but a fair number of developing countries (India and China for example) went with those. Considering that the US basically has a Third World financial system, I wouldn't be surprised if an American version of WeChat or Alipay ends up winning out eventually. (Hell, Visa even has a US-specific QR code standard and supports their use by merchants and banks.)
The most frustrating holdout has been restaurants, where it's a "service" to take your card back to their cashier station to do the charge.
Unfortunately, that's unlikely to change any time soon. Not only because chip and signature makes wireless terminals unjustifiable for most restaurants, but because the few places that have tried them found that their customers actually hate those (and had to go back to taking cards away as a result). Maybe if PIN becomes required, we'll be more accepting of paying at the front since we already do that for Denny's and some other places.
