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by peoplefromibiza 1596 days ago
In Italy RFID payments have been a thing since 1989

Unfortunately this is one of those cases where being among early adopters wasn't an advantage, in many areas of Italy cash is still the only viable payment method.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telepass
1 comments
pelorat 1596 days ago
> in many areas of Italy cash is still the only viable payment method.

cough tax avoidance cough

link
peoplefromibiza 1595 days ago
As an Italian I can't disagree, cabs not accepting credit cards infuriate me evrytime, but there's also a strong cultural resistance to change here.

Also friction plays a part, Italy is the second oldest country in the World on average.

My mom uses electronic payments, but I haven't been able to teach her how to pay online or "tap to pay" no matter how hard I tried.

I won't even start to talk about my dad, who doesn't even own a smartphone or a mobile phone before the smart ones existed.

They prefer to go to the ATM and pay cash, their lifestyle is very far from globalized even though they are strongly against tax evasion and always ask for their receipt.

Ironically I've know about Telepass because my parents have been using it for as long as I can remember.

My guess is that they trust Telepass because it's backed by a (former) public institution, Autostrade, but they don't trust mobile phone manufacturers or payment processor companies as much.

I'm not sure they are completely wrong.

link