“Walmart executive, John Drechny, predicted a more chaotic holiday shopping season due to the change. He felt the EMV transition would cause confusion and longer lines during the Christmas rush.”
Some industry analysts are predicting that this friction will drive transactional volume to mobile payments.
“EMV cards take 15 seconds to process. That’s up from two seconds for a mag stripe swipe. What about ApplePay readers? That is micro-seconds,” the Morgan Stanley analysts said. “Watch for mobile payments to take off as retailers turn on NFC to enable mobile wallet payments and encourage you to use your phone to pay.”
The concerns over holiday shopping confusion and frustration are real, but it is unlikely that mobile payments will allieviate those concerns in the short term. For the majority of merchants that are still working on converting to EMV, NFC-based mobile payments are simply not a realistic alternative at this time.
Overview by Alex Johnson, Senior Analyst, Credit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group