Originally Posted by
Majuki
That's why there are no lines to get the latest electronic device...
The reason why people largely don't care about EMV in the US has been covered multiple times on this thread and its predecessors. In the US you have zero liability for unauthorized purchases, and everyone from card issuers to merchants want it to be as easy as possible for you to use your card. Yes, you have some merchants complain about fees, but for the most part merchants prefer card use because people tend to spend more when using a card. The liability shift was transparent as a cardholder, and it's up to the merchants to decide whether or not they want to upgrade their terminals to support EMV. From the liability shift just over 2 years ago, I see many merchants now accepting EMV payments. In 2014 we pretty much had Walmart as the only major retailer with EMV enabled (although not required at the time).
Furthermore, requiring chip-and-PIN or that terminals have certain features may in fact hinder innovation in the payments industry. If in the future we're all paying by scanning QR codes, NFC, or some yet-to-be-invented method, you don't want to be constrained by something that restricts you to card payments that are chip-and-PIN using EMV terminals.
I still get my card swiped somewhat often, unfortunately. There are even brand new businesses opening with only magstripe support and not even having a customer facing PIN pad. Granted, these are mainly counter service restaurants where I'm seeing this; I imagine if I didn't eat out nearly as often I'd probably be pretty close to going to only EMV supporting businesses (gas stations being the one other exception, but even there a lot of them have it enabled inside).
Anyway, whatever the next payment technology is, I wouldn't be surprised if we implement it a decade or so after everyone else--and in large part only because we don't have a choice (overseas acceptance issues, fraud, or some other reason). That said, I'm not sure how long that advance will take for Europe to support in the first place, so we could end up being on par with them for quite a while.
Originally Posted by
mikesyr18
I wouldn't call smartphones a new technology... They've been out for at least 11 years and nobody cared to use them from the start.
I've had smartphones from the pre-iPhone days and they sucked pretty hard. I don't blame anyone else for not bothering with them at the start, especially considering their cost (both the device itself and the cell plan required).
Originally Posted by
mikesyr18
Have to disagree here. For starters, focus groups won't do anything if most people in the country don't even know contactless cards exist, which is well over 99% of Americans.
Same idea with transit systems. If people don't know the technology exists, the culture won't adopt to it.
We've adopted to Apple Pay because there's been just enough of a push where the public has seen and knows about it, but even three years later, we're still getting cashiers with wide eyes over something that should no longer be surprising to see..
The person running the focus group can explain what they are. In fact, a lot of surveys ask about something, give some facts about that something, then ask similar questions again to gauge how those facts change people's opinions.
As for transit, I can guarantee they know what contactless credit cards are. When San Diego started looking into replacing their fare collection system for example, they asked other transit agencies about their stuff and found that contactless cards got almost no use. The only reason why SD's even going to install equipment that can support them is to possibly support Apple Pay and other mobile wallets in the future; they're not expecting contactless cards to ever be a thing in the US and have even implied as such in the documents they've put out.
BTW cashiers at the bigger retailers around here don't really react to paying with a phone like it's something new anymore. YMMV of course.