The New York Times in the Personal Tech section extolled the virtues of mobile wallets over EMV cards. The opinion expressed was less about the capability of wallets as it was the disappointing slowness of EMV.
Many merchants and retail workers are watching their lives play in slow motion when they process credit cards. To combat fraudulent transactions, the retail industry is shifting away from the traditional magnetic stripe toward tiny computer chips embedded inside cards.
The chip initially may annoy consumers. For most chip transactions, you have to dip the credit card into a slot and wait for the transaction to be approved before you can remove it and scribble your signature
.
When comparing wallets vs. cards, there were significant timing differences recorded. The reported noted:
At Walgreens, after I inserted a chip card, the transaction took eight seconds before a receipt started printing; Apple Pay and Samsung Pay took three seconds; and Android Pay (Google’s service) took seven seconds. At BevMo, the chip payment took 10 seconds; Samsung Pay took four seconds and Android Pay and Apple Pay each took five seconds. At Nancy Boy, the chip took eight seconds, and all the mobile payment services tied at 2.4 seconds.
Overview by Sarah Grotta, Director, Debit Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
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