Originally Posted by
kebosabi
I'm still waiting for contactless to take off here in the US. Unfortunately, the overblown media hype of "hackers stealing your info from a mile away" stories scared a lot of the people away from them, and of course there's also "the NSA is spying on me with chips on credit cards, run away, run awaaay (ala Monty Python)" people too. Thanks to these, not many cards are available with contactless capability.
I think we stand a better chance of mobile payment taking off. Think of the Starbucks or mobile boarding pass model where you can have them scan the barcode off of your phone.
I don't think contactless payment suffers from a perception problem, but so few places consistently accept it and so few cards support it that it never took off. The problem I see with too much reliance on one's phone is what happens when the battery dies or the phone crashes at an inopportune time? There's no fallback technology. I've already had a few fumbles myself with mobile boarding passes where the AA app hiccuped right before the gate agent scanned it.