Also - this is not clear to me - what new pieces have to rollout for this to work? New Point-of-sale machines AND new phones with NFC? COuld this interoperate with an iPAD POS app like Square?
I still have a dozen or so "Expresspay Blue" charges sitting there in Mint, uncategorized, because I can't remember who I paid $12.57 to back in October (or whatever).
Minor annoyance? Absolutely. But if NFC-payment-via-phone has the same issue, you can bet money that I'll ditch it and go back to swiping my credit card.
In over 10 years I've only had the mag strip on one CC fail on me. Though, to be fair, my current AmEx has split in two (it's two pieces of plastic bonded together... not particularly strongly, I guess), but the card still works.