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Comment by nknealk | Hacker News Reader

I was recently in England. Nearly every payment terminal supports contactless in the cities I visited. I found myself using Apple Pay throughout the trip because it was fast and convenient. Also in restaurants they bring a payment terminal out to your table so you can pay with Apple Pay.

Unfortunately, contactless payment terminals are somewhat more rare in the USA. My local grocery store (Kroger) doesn’t have them.

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It's genuinely shocking how far behind the USA is in terms of consumer banking. I moved from Chicago to London about six months ago, and I can't believe how much more convenient it is. You can wire money to anyone with a bank account without an intermediary like Venmo or Zelle from your phone, either as a one-off or recurring. I can revoke permission to draw regularly on my account from my phone, so I don't have to go 10 rounds with the gym or something to quit. You can pay for anything you like with a tap of your phone, and it takes maybe a second to clear. My credit cards never leave my possession.

I still have the envelope of cash I pulled out when I got here in February, minus maybe £40. I haven't needed it!

What is more maddening is that vendors had to replace their POS terminals to support chips after Apple Pay and other contactless payments were a thing and they still have new terminals that don’t support contactless payments.

Yup, same in the Netherlands and Romania.

The adoption of contactless payments in Romania has been astonishing. When I first moved here four years ago you could only pay by card at restaurants and supermarkets and definitely not contactless. Now, four years later, you can pay contactless everywhere. Including all the little stores. Any place that supports card payments also supports contactless payments. Hell, you can hop in any bus now and buy a ticket on the spot with the contactless payment terminals in the bus. No human interaction required, you just hold up your card or phone and it prints a ticket.

Ever since Apple Pay became available, I can't remember the last time I pulled out my card.

There are only two things I still use cash for. Tipping and taxis. The latter can be worked around by using Uber or one of the local competitors.

In London you generally don't even get a bus, rail or underground ticket. You just swipe the contactless pads to hop on, or in and out at stations. Very occasionally an inspector just holds a hand terminal to your card to check you paid.

>Very occasionally an inspector just holds a hand terminal to your card to check you paid.

For a ticket inspector, there is hardly any information to discern if a journey has been made when using a Contactless card. Furthermore, anybody who uses this method knows that it can be several days before a journey shows up on the list of transactions. Although, it is largely to do with how the TfL payment system was implemented, with Contactless being more of a hindsight. However, it is significantly better than nothing at all.

Many smaller places are now going cashless too. The coffee shop that I go to near my office just renovated last week and is now cashless. I don’t think they even have a chip reader, I think they are contactless only.

When I still lived in Scotland, I did everything day-to-day with either Apple Pay or (on busses, which somehow didn't support it) non-Apple Pay contactless.

> (on busses, which somehow didn't support it) non-Apple Pay contactless.

Anyone know how that could happen? My impression was that they used the same protocol.

It's weird that we lag so far behind in some areas, even when we help develop the technology.

> It's weird that we lag so far behind in some areas

Blame lobbying.

According to Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga[1], they've noticed that if the transport system in an area becomes contactless enabled, then contactless adoption ramps up faster.

[1] - https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2019/07/30/ma... Search the page for "transport" and go to the first result.

Anecdotally - London use of contactless certainly accelerated when the Underground started taking contactless.

My understanding is that's how contactless (somewhat) took off in Japan. Though Japan as a whole is still even more cash-centric than Germany is. It wouldn't surprise me that the use of contactless cards at least in places like convenience stores and vending machines arose in part because credit card use isn't that widespread.

It's not the only reason but the US has a scale and population density disadvantage which makes it more expensive to roll out technology nationwide. You can see this with cellphones as well - rolling out 3G coverage across the UK is a lot cheaper 'per customer' than it is across the US, so we have better coverage.

Why contactless cards haven’t caught on in the U.S. (3 min)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRZ4OodETr8

It's almost like New Zealand 25 years ago.

I don't know how people put up with the arse-backwards payments in the US. Paying for things like rent with cheques, for heaven's sake!

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