I wish my site loaded up as fast as yours lol

A lot of times it’s challenging to get that “perfect balance” between user friendliness and visual appeal. I must say you have done a great job with this. Additionally, the blog loads extremely fast for me on Opera. Excellent Blog!

I’ve long wondered if NFC and similar services simply require a transition based on age. Even if Google gives away Android, builds the requisite NFC infrastructure, makes it cost effective for everyone, from user to merchant to bank, etc., offers customers real-time coupons and enables group buying, will this be enough?

I wonder this because invariably I am stuck behind the old lady at the checkout searching for a pen to write a check for her purchases while she chats up the cashier.

I agree, it’s not going to happen over night and to think so would be naive, but there needs to be a tipping point. Lots of solutions currently exist for people to make person-to-person payments via mobile devices, but in the U.S., people just aren’t used to buying things with their phones. In other countries like Japan, they’re already very comfortable making payments. I can’t speak to what the tipping point was there, but I think that having a major player like Google would greatly help to accelerate the adoption.

Re 1. I agree and it’ll probably take quite a while for them to standardize. However, if someone like Google, who is partnered with Citi, can make a wave (no pun intended) in the space, then perhaps that can happen sooner rather than later.

Re 2. That’s certainly a tiny number but growth for a lot of new things is often a lot slower for a while. HDTVs have been around for a long time, but only very recently have they become mainstream. The rate of growth could be different for the terminals although we’ll have to see.

Re 3. I think the benefits are more in Google Wallet than anything. There is immense benefit to not having to carry around multiple store loyalty cards or multiple punchtab cards. Not to mention getting the complete itemized details of a transaction directly sent to an online account in conjunction with electronic receipts makes a very compelling reason for it. Could some of these things be done without literally having contact-less payments? Sure, but why not add it in if you’re already going for these other features.

Rob
Itemize.com

1.Merchants cannot accommodate a variety of different programs which require different equipment. All the players need to sit down and get their act together.
2. Average terminal lifespan is about 7 years. Unless really motivated, that’s how long it will take AFTER a single system is decided upon. At the Google Wallet presentation, Mastercard announced that 300,000 out of 30,000,000 merchant terminals were ready for RFID cards, six years after the cards were launched.
3. As Jean Louis started off saying, no one has yet described the amazing customer value that mobile payments bring versus plastic cards with mag stripes. That could speed up the process, but we have yet to see it.

Rob
Itemize.com

The issue with all of the wallet solutions up to and including GW is that they layer a new payment action onto the existing setup. Look, now, at Square Card Case and the matching Register program for merchants (https://squareup.com/cardcase) which rethinks how we pay and layers on things like analytics in the register software for merchants. Want a reason to replace your register? How about letting people start ‘tabs’ and getting analytics around what your repeat customers are doing?

GW is, to use Tracy Kidder’s phrase in Soul of a New Machine, a bag on the side of the current system.

The other issue is that the coupon/discount business relies on small uptake/redemption rates. Making it more convenient to redeem will inevitably reduce the margins to be discounted – although EOL blow-outs, etc. wouldn’t be affected. We are seeing some big bets on loss-leaders (like the Amazon Lady Gaga promotion, never mind Group-On and the FaceBook efforts) so this whole arena is getting interesting.

Carriers are not happy of being disintermediated and it is interesting to see how this will evolve.

Google is quite silent because of… you will see Just keep your eyes open the next few weeks

I have no numbers, but I’ve 129 Followers and Follow over 200, who post selected quality content. I’ve just 109 “Friends” on facebook, so set that into relation, then you have your answer. And Buzz is Justin Bieber free. Yeah it’s unimaginable but that is a Pro, not a Con.

Moreover, the US still uses MSD (mag stripe data) contactless cards. The rest of the world uses or is converting to EMV spec, contact cards (1FF smart cards). These systems are incompatible.

So merchants are faced with the potential of multiple terminals in order to talk to these cards (Google Wallet, Visa, Apple, mag stripe cards, RFID cards, EMV contact cards, and the list goes on and on). No way merchants will put any new terminals in unless they are forced to by the card associations – and are promised that it’s a one time conversion.

When Visa, Mastercard, Amex and Discover make a decision, then we’ll see this take off.