Compare this with the fees of Visa/MC in the West. They have a lock on electronic payments in many countries, and aren't about to expand their business by cutting their very lucrative fees to Alipay/Wechat levels.
Visa/Mastercard's interchange is already capped at very low levels in many countries, especially in the EU (0.2-0.3%). In fact, I feel like businesses in the US are less happy about accepting cards partly as a result of a relative lack of said caps; I suspect the US would still be a predominantly cash society without the previous decades of conditioning the public to use them.
Originally Posted by
synthkeys
I just don't see this happening in the US any time soon as the credit card companies and merchant providers have the system all locked down to collect their fees and theres not a company who can gain dominance enough to take over electronic payment. Maybe Apple Pay but it's acceptance is certainly not happening fast, even with the millennials. If any company had a chance it might have been PayPal, the youngins are using Venmo a lot but I still can't pay for my lunch in NYC with Venmo.
Apple Pay and other NFC based mobile wallets still rely on Visa and Mastercard. If businesses are already fairly unhappy about accepting cards (to the point where some, like Kroger,
are killing off acceptance at some of their locations), they're going to be hesitant to enable methods that make card use easier. I'm honestly surprised acceptance is as high as it is.
Additionally, stuff like Venmo is still going to require POS software updates on the retailer side since they aren't going to buy a separate device or rely on employees' own mobile devices to accept QR payments. Plus,
it doesn't seem any less expensive than just accepting cards directly (nor does Venmo allow in-person businesses at the time of this writing, which is probably the biggest factor).