If NFC ever takes off as a must-have in the payments world, I'm sure Square would try to use the NFC in phones through their app.
But given that they've already tried a "Just use the app, forget your wallet" approach that didn't take off like they wanted, I'm guessing they're not ready to try anything outside of mainstream payment cards.
How is your experience with the reliability? I was recently up in Edmonton and anecdotally it seemed like people had serious issues with the NFC payment methods. Several times I saw people attempt to pay via NFC, try 5 times, then eventually pay via insertion+PIN. Looked profoundly frustrating.
In Australia, I would say about at least 75% of all in-person payments I make are with PayPass/PayWave. That other 25% is cash and the odd place that hasnt updated their terminals yet. Some banks will even give you like a 5% cash back if you use contactless.
It's very reliable and is the defacto method of payment in places like pubs. Often I'll hand my card over and they'll ask 'Can I just PayWave that?'
> How is your experience with the reliability? I was recently up in Edmonton and anecdotally it seemed like people had serious issues with the NFC payment methods. Several times I saw people attempt to pay via NFC, try 5 times, then eventually pay via insertion+PIN. Looked profoundly frustrating.
Here (Austria) that's mostly because some people have cards without PayPass and they are not aware that they need new cards for it. I never had problems with it and always use it (even for transactions > 25 EUR) in which case it prompts for the PIN. It's super convenient and much faster.
I use it all the time here in the UK but if you bend/snap the card at all, it totally breaks and doesn't work at all. Even though the stripe and chip works.
Probably not a big problem but I have a tendency to sit on my card every so often.
But given that they've already tried a "Just use the app, forget your wallet" approach that didn't take off like they wanted, I'm guessing they're not ready to try anything outside of mainstream payment cards.