NFC TIMES Exclusive – NFC wallets are failing to catch on in the U.S., especially for in-store transactions, for a variety of reasons, including poor awareness among consumers and cashiers, lack of full buy-in from merchants, problems with certifying terminals for contactless and an insufficient value proposition, said industry players, including a representative from Google.
The players, speaking on an industry panel at a recent conference in the U.S., also said fragmentation among wallet providers is playing a role in what has been disappointing take-up for mobile wallets among consumers in the U.S.
The members on the panel, titled, “Tap, Pay, Done: Cutting Through the Clutter with Mobile Payments,” held May 10 at the Transact conference and expo organized by the Electronic Transactions Association, were speaking about the U.S. market. But wallet providers are seeing a low adoption rate in most other markets where the “Pays” wallets, such as Apple Pay and Android Pay, have launched. That is despite the rosy rhetoric from Cupertino and Mountain View about take-up of their respective wallets.
