Good point, but often that's not the case. If you're buying groceries at Kroger, you won't get a cash discount.
If I'm buying a TV, sure I might get $100 off, but I'm losing my purchase protection and extended warranties.
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'Walmart Pay' Mobile Wallet Rolls Out to Nearly 600 Stores in Texas and Arkansas
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Good point, but often that's not the case. If you're buying groceries at Kroger, you won't get a cash discount.
If I'm buying a TV, sure I might get $100 off, but I'm losing my purchase protection and extended warranties.
Larger purchases is the key here, not haircuts or burgers. On the bigger scale, the ranch property I'm on fell out of escrow twice before I came along. By offering cash (actually a bank check) and negating the need for mortgage nonsense (thereby shortening up escrow), I negotiated a 15k reduction in the price. Cha-ching.
I could not care less about 25 cents off a burger or two bucks off a haircut.
Yeah of course credit is convenient for some stuff. My point was that cash has its place as well as credit.
Apple Pay is mainly useless. You tap. Yeah, that's fast. Then you gotta get a pen (real or digital) and sign the dotted line (paper or digital). Then you grab the receipt.
Same with using Apple Pay at an ATM. You tap. Then you say you want english, then hit withdraw, pick the account, then hit the amount, then say no receipt, then you get the cash, then click you don't want another transaction.
Here are two better ideas.
Walmart - You unlock your phone. Open walmart app. Hit pay and scan. Done. Receipt is in the phone. No need to sign anything. Get loyalty points and any coupons applied to the purchase automatically.
Careless Cash ATM - You preset your withdraw (since I usually withdraw the same amount from the same account always). You go to ATM, click on button. Scan QR code. Get cash.
Same with using Apple Pay at an ATM. You tap. Then you say you want english, then hit withdraw, pick the account, then hit the amount, then say no receipt, then you get the cash, then click you don't want another transaction.
Here are two better ideas.
Walmart - You unlock your phone. Open walmart app. Hit pay and scan. Done. Receipt is in the phone. No need to sign anything. Get loyalty points and any coupons applied to the purchase automatically.
Careless Cash ATM - You preset your withdraw (since I usually withdraw the same amount from the same account always). You go to ATM, click on button. Scan QR code. Get cash.
No need to sign anything with Apple Pay either. Blame retailers for not implementing what's needed for that.
Come North of the border to see how the technology is supposed to be implemented.
Chip-And-PIN, You are given the terminal, insert card, confirm the amount, key in PIN, remove card. Done. Card never leaves your physical control. In a restaurant, they bring a wireless terminal to your table.
NFC (card or Apple/Android Pay), tap card/bring phone close to terminal. Done.
The US has chosen to delay implementation of Chip-And-PIN and NFC technology, and then to implement it piecemeal.
America has really fallen behind in technology everywhere.
The cell phone coverage sucks; the data speeds are slow, the credit card technology still uses mag-stripe (mostly), NFC is rare to find, and educational technology is sub-par.
It doesn't help that the size of America is huge compared to some of the countries that have more advanced technology. This isn't supposed to be a complaint post, but my ultimate goal is to move to a 1st world country with a smaller population and more advanced infrastructure, someday of course.
Size is somewhat of a barrier. Mostly though, the large number of small banks is an impediment. Canada has 5 large banks, and a handful of payment processors.
There is also this fascination in the US to have the credit card processing equipment integrated into the POS system. That is rare in Canada. Typically, the terminal is stand alone, interacting only by passing the amount to the terminal and the "approved" message back. Which means that most CC terminals are rented from the payment processors. So they, and not the stores, bore the brunt of the capital cost. They just shipped new terminals. But it was planned and took years. Chip capable terminals had been showing up much before the implementation date.
We also did not coddle the consumers. When the switch over happened, it was simply, you have a chip, use the PIN.
There is also this fascination in the US to have the credit card processing equipment integrated into the POS system. That is rare in Canada. Typically, the terminal is stand alone, interacting only by passing the amount to the terminal and the "approved" message back. Which means that most CC terminals are rented from the payment processors. So they, and not the stores, bore the brunt of the capital cost. They just shipped new terminals. But it was planned and took years. Chip capable terminals had been showing up much before the implementation date.
We also did not coddle the consumers. When the switch over happened, it was simply, you have a chip, use the PIN.
I get 60-70 megabits a second on T-Mobile on a consistent basis. Besides, after around 10 or so it's not really noticeable for day to day stuff, unless you torrent stuff onto your phone all the time or something.
Oh, for...
People forget how long things took in their own countries to convert to chip & PIN.
Australia, which had relatively little fraud, took over a decade to do it.
Canada, which had more fraud, still took many years even with banks working together. Serious movement started in 2008, and yet two years later still only about 1/2 of merchant terminals took a chip card. In fact, Canada is used to demonstrate some of the known problems of moving to chip & PIN, such as a famous 2007 trial where many people could not remember to use a PIN or what it was. They also often left the card in the slot. That trial delayed the rollout.
Now, one major place that moved very fast, was the UK. But they had to, because their fraud rate was almost triple that of other places like the US. A lot of that was due to not having online authorizations, same as much of the EU.
(Which is the main reason chip and PIN was invented in the first place. OTOH, some countries like the US always had realtime authorization, PLUS American banks had spent lots on computerized fraud analytics to help with authorization checks. UK and Canadian banks had invested very little in such modern technology.)
Yep, that's the way it'll end up in the US as well.
Ironically, the first time I saw wireless terminals was in Mexico many years ago, because no one wanted their card to be out of sight long enough to be copied.
Just going by Canada, the US still has years to go before they can be considered "behind" in a rollout.
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To be fair, they started at a more reasonable time then we did. I have no idea why Visa and MasterCard didn't impose a liability shift for every country at the same time back in the 90's. Visa and MasterCard own the networks and the cards, not the banks. The banks are just partnered with the networks to deliver the service to the customer.
Banks here actually started going backwards before they went forward. Banks went from issuing cards with Paypass/Paywave to taking them out of the cards completely, to then putting EMV chips in them in 2014, 2015, and 2016. The banks here probably would've kept RFID in our cards had the typical American not went, "how can I destroy the RFID in this card," when it arrived in the mail. Personally I get real tired of the close-mindedness of most Americans.
I doubt it. Business owners don't want to spend money on anything, yet alone more expensive technology to bring a wireless terminal to the table. Business owners (especially restaurant) want to invest in as little as possible to get by this EMV liability shift. The idea of the wireless payment terminal will go the way of Paypass/Paywave.
I could see some of the high end restaurants having wireless EMV/NFC terminals available to customers, but not restaurants like Pizza Hut or Denny's.
Americans have adopted lots of things. There's just not much incentive in this case, since 1) we're covered for fraud and 2) the banks aren't pushing it and 3) the stores aren't really pushing it.
The only close-mindedness here is yours
because you think everyone must adopt the same decades old technology.Maybe US banks should've waited to come up with something even better and more convenient. Say, chip cards with fingerprint readers built-in.
Americans have adopted lots of things. There's just not much incentive in this case, since 1) we're covered for fraud and 2) the banks aren't pushing it and 3) the stores aren't really pushing it.
The only close-mindedness here is yours
Maybe US banks should've waited to come up with something even better and more convenient. Say, chip cards with fingerprint readers built-in.
Right up until the rest of the world starts deploying terminals that have no mag stripe and can only do chip-and-PIN. It's already near impossible to use an automated machine in Europe without Chip-and-PIN. I c an also foresee a day where card won't have a mag stripe.
Of course not, because that means they'd have to spend money. Look at the outcry about spending money on EMV terminals. The merchants act like it's the end of the world because they have to update their ancient card readers.
It's one of those cases where a group says, "shhh, if we don't say or do anything, maybe they won't notice."
I guess, but the did attempt to release RFID cards, so that does count as "pushing it," just not hard.
That would've been a terrific idea. This technology probably wouldn't have happened with debit cards though, at least not initially, as the cost to make the card wouldn't be outweighed by the relatively crappy interchange fees for debit cards (capped by law). There's no such thing as a premium debit card anymore in the U.S unless you're willing to pay an annual fee for it and have $25,000 or more always sitting in your account (Sun Trust Delta debit card).
We already are. Last year, people in the industry were estimating close to 50% merchant penetration by the end of 2015. Instead, only 17% had it enabled. They're estimating close to 50% again this year but I imagine it'll be closer to 35-40%.
I'm also half expecting us to get to something like 75% penetration or so and then just...stopping. I mean, by that point the thieves will have switched to committing fraud on the internet instead, so the liability shift won't be much of a risk anymore. In fact, Canada had to eventually mandate EMV acceptance for debit cards to get to 100%.
Pizza Hut and Denny's have you pay at the front counter (or order online/by phone), so they don't have any need to buy those. Sit-down restaurants won't have any sort of pay by the table solution on a widespread basis unless they're a large enough chain (like Chili's) that can afford the tablets at every table. No need to when people can still sign for purchases--and even then, switching to pay at the counter might be cheaper.
If Coin wasn't so late to the party I could almost see the US just adopting that type of technology plus some sort of tokenization/one time card number solution instead.
BTW: http://www.smartmetric.com/. Though it kinda feels like vaporware to me, they're IIRC supposedly actually trailing the technology with MasterCard and a few issuers.
Chinese debit cards supposedly have already removed it, which has caused problems for people traveling abroad--even in countries that have the chip.
The point is, I don't think any switch over to chip went as originally predicted
For example, Canada was supposed to start back in 2003. Then it got delayed to 2005. Then they ran a trial in 2007 and discovered people couldn't remember a PIN that was assigned by the bank, among other problems.
The banks finally got going in earnest in 2008, but by 2010 still had far less switchover than originally estimated (only 1/2 of terminals updated after two years). Visa finally had to set a deadline for liability of 2012, I think.
And that was with the extreme advantage of Canadian merchant terminals being mostly owned and controlled by the acquirers, which meant it was easier to update stores.
So, taking many years and missing predictions is not uncommon.
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I see no security benefit with chip. I already had charges on my card that weren't authorized. So to me it's a waste of time, resources, etc.
Online fraud is rising, thanks to those fancy chip cards
Which is expected since it happened everywhere else that got them; the chip only helps with in-person transactions. (Also, your card likely got skimmed and used somewhere that hasn't upgraded yet, which is still a lot of places.)
So how is this going? Is Walmart pushing this in the stores where they have rolled it out? Are the cashiers aware that they support it? Are people other than a few early adopters actually using it? I feel like I'm the only person who uses ApplePay in several of the places I use it. I get either looks of surprise like "How'd you do that?" or recognition for being "that guy" that uses it.
Of course the cashiers know they support it. No matter how backward the technology, that is the big difference between Wal-Mart Pay and Pay and every other contactless system.
The cashiers not only know they have have it, they have been trained on how to use it, and how to offer it to every customer with a smartphone who's not using it.
And that's why it will ultimately be far more successful than pay in the short term, and help establish WalMart Pay as the preferred method in their stores, even training WalMart customers to question why other stores don't use it because it's so simple and easy to use.
What evidence do you have of this? Have you actually seen a cashier explain it to someone?
Walmart Pay wasn't designed to appeal to Apple Snobs.
Walmart knows their target market especially well. Implementation of their existing apps is very robust. Unlike just a few short years ago, iPhones and iPads have lost a bit of their luster. As a growing number of mainstream buyers tire of Apple's stratospheric pricing and incessant obsession with pushing upgrades, there's a shift in consumer focus.
Reasonable priced mid tier Android smartphones are growing in popularity and the novelty of using a phone to pay has worn off. Witness the recent mass installation of conventional credit card scanners at every Starbucks across the USA. Only the vain need to appear "Cool" using their iPhone to pay, everyone else finds one fast swipe of their card far easier and faster.
Holding up an iPhone, waiting for the beep as it's scanned, is neither magical or revolutionary.
Walmart knows their target market especially well. Implementation of their existing apps is very robust. Unlike just a few short years ago, iPhones and iPads have lost a bit of their luster. As a growing number of mainstream buyers tire of Apple's stratospheric pricing and incessant obsession with pushing upgrades, there's a shift in consumer focus.
Reasonable priced mid tier Android smartphones are growing in popularity and the novelty of using a phone to pay has worn off. Witness the recent mass installation of conventional credit card scanners at every Starbucks across the USA. Only the vain need to appear "Cool" using their iPhone to pay, everyone else finds one fast swipe of their card far easier and faster.
Holding up an iPhone, waiting for the beep as it's scanned, is neither magical or revolutionary.