Modern technologies are developing so rapidly that sometimes it even gets scary. A few decades ago, no one could even think that they would pay in stores, gas stations, medical centers, etc. using a tiny piece of plastic. But nowadays contactless cards and even digital wallets in smartphones are widely spread.
In a few words, contactless or “tap and pay” payments allow carrying out transactions without swiping or inserting a card into a checkout terminal. It is much faster and easier for both consumers and merchants. Just 1 or 2 seconds are enough to complete a purchase. Moreover, the technology turns out to be rather secure due to reliable encoding of account information during data transmission.
The contactless payment method has been used by a large number of people around the world for several years by now. Australia, the United Kingdom, and Poland are among those countries where cardholders now get used to tapping their cards or phones for the majority of purchases. Mastercard and Visa are currently working hard on providing acceptance of this method by merchants in Europe by 2020. Various surveys show that people like the idea of using contactless payment.
Nevertheless, the U.S. still drops behind. Thus, the main question is whether America is ready to accept the innovation and contactless payment and mobile wallets are here to stay. The experts’ answer is YES. The situation is starting to develop little by little. Therefore, everything can change dramatically soon.
Most merchants already fulfill contactless payments or are preparing to put it into practice in the nearest future. The same applies to banks and other financial organizations issuing credit cards. Visa is reported to expect 100 million of its U.S. cards to be contactless by the end of 2019. Such major issuers as American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi, and Wells Fargo successfully offer their old and new customers debit and/or credit cards with the contactless feature. In the following several years, a big number of other issuers are going to follow their lead.
Thus, it can be concluded that America is more than ever ready to catch the wave of general delight and the contactless payment is the U.S. near future but not a fleeting fad.
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