Hacker News Reader

Mobile payments haven't taken off in the west because credit cards have worked well enough. In china, lots of small-scale businesses lack POS terminals while Chinese banks put the burden of proof in case of fraud on the card user, rather than the merchant as in the west. Using a credit card in china is an absolute PITA.

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.

Just wish everyone would hop onboard quicker. We still need a lot of consumer education.

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.

Chips are unnaturally slow in the states, they are pretty fast in Europe.

So I have to have a apple phone worth several hundred dollars plus the extortionate mobile charges in the USA instead of a free credit card with tap and go I know which one I prefer

Well you could use Android if you can't afford an iPhone. There are many different options for mobile payments.

So only £150 fo a moto g then a bargain

I use Android Pay all the time at Whole Foods in the US and it works great. It's faster than a chip card, and it links directly to my existing card.

> Mobile payments haven't taken off in the west because credit cards have worked well enough

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.

Absolutely. This thread seems to be populated with people who think everywhere in "the west" = the USA.

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.

Everywhere to me is just china and the USA. I haven't been to the UK in years, but was happy about NFC usage when I tripped to austrailia.

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.

> Mobile payments haven't taken off in the west because credit cards have worked well enough

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.

Yeah, it is hard to overstate just how easy it is to use a credit card in the US.

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.

Mobile payments are much faster and easier than the credit card chip in my experience at places that have both options.

> Yeah, it is hard to overstate just how easy it is to use a credit card in the US.

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.

> Paying for things in the US feels like the stone ages.

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!

>Handing my card over to someone who disappears off with it?

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.

In the context of a restaurant where they take it away, I agree. Also, if they actually require a signature.

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.

The worst part is how inconsistent indicators of NFC support are. There is only one grocery store near where I live that I know supports nfc, because they put the logo on their credit card readers. Everywhere else I have to pull out plastic because I have no idea what payment systems they support.

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...)

I think you're right that this is the dynamic at play here. It is similar to the dynamic by which many regions have leapfrogged landline telephones, skipping the older more infrastructure/capital intensive version of technology.

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.

That's because they are poor countries as well as its harder for people / insurgents to nick the copper. Mobile is never going to be as good as FTC (Fiber To CAB) in terms of bandwidth

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

> The developed economies were already mostly "cashless." Very little cash has run though most malls, hospitals, schools or even supermarkets for decades already.

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

Including salaries, rent, mortgage payments...?

> as opposed to cash, which is much slower with people counting out amounts and cashiers counting out change

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).

This is an American perspective, on my case cards are much faster than cash, I just tap the card, and it's done instantly.

It works better in places that have tap to pay (you know, the developed world), you just tap your card on the terminal and it's done, quicker than swiping, quicker than cash even.

The vast majority of places where I have to wait in line to pay (lunch spot near work, CVS, Starbucks, etc.) I don't have to sign because the amount is below the limit (usually $25 or $50). Pretty much the main place I need to sign is at restaurants, and then I usually don't care because I'm sitting down, in conversion, and not in a rush.

I am pretty disappointed at the lack of locations accepting Android Pay. I was hoping to ditch my wallet but can pretty much only use it at the gas station, Subway, and Walgreens.

> 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

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.

"People counting cash"

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