Universal mobile payment schemes enabling folks to leave the wallet at home have been slow to catch on, but the article calls out how wider acceptance by retailers may be on the horizon, with some break between their plans for implementation and consumers preferred mobile payment scheme.
It has gotten easier this year for retailers to start accepting mobile payments, since the terminals required to accept the new credit card chips generally can also take payment via near-field communication, the technology used by most mobile payment systems.
Among the retailers surveyed by the NRF, 72 percent said that they would have the capability of accepting near-field communication payments next year, but just over two-thirds said they’d only accept one or very few types.
What many considered would be a rapid revolution to mobile pay has manifest much more as a slow pivot of expanding adoption. The timing of EMV card adoption, while requiring merchants to upgrade POS devices (typically to models with integrated NFC capability), redirected many of the resources that had been looking to actualize mobile payment acceptance. It remains to be seen how retailers actually move to acceptance and which schemes will be the winners. It is safe to say that consumers will be looking for more choice in how they pay in 2017.
Overview by Joseph Walent, Senior Analyst, Emerging Technologies Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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