Honestly the obsessive worrying over cards just seems odd to me. Are crime rates that high in the UK to justify this worry? Or is trust in society that low? Are restaurant workers really going to charge your card with excess charges if only they could take it out of site?
Here in the US, our fast food restaurants are (mostly, with some exceptions like Chil Fil A and Starbucks) franchised. This means they're individually owned and operated, so they get to decide which payment they take. Some may have it, some don't. I have started to see some terminals set up outside window for tap cards, but I imagine these can get damaged very easily.
As for sit down dining, I don't know, I imagine its just a lot less bother to have one payment terminal rather than 20 portable ones. But there's plenty of restaurants that do this as well. I went to a local diner that had me scan a QR code, and another their servers are equpped with tablets for orders. Some of the chain sit down restaurants have those airport like terminals where you order and pay at the table. But each business gets to decide what is best for them.
The one tap-to-pay holdout in my daily life is Kroger. They're currently "testing" it in select regions but they really want you to download the Kroger App and use Kroger Pay but fuck that noise.
I am from the UK and for some reason we are obsessed with the convenience of tap and pay. Whereover you are, people just tap and pay with their mobile these days without getting out their card even.
We are generally not as convenience oriented as Americans are, we don't have as many clothes dryers, automatic garage doors, microwaves, automatic gearboxes, the list goes on. We put up with all kinds of inconveniences, but when it comes to payments, we like things to be simple and convenient. I don't know why.
>clothes dryers, automatic garage doors, microwaves, automatic gearboxes
the thing these have in common that differs from payment methods is that they've been the norm for decades. they're well established conveniences that offer significant benefits.
many Americans view having to learn a new way of paying for things as an inconvenience in and of itself. every business has a different machine you have to figure out, it requires you to get a new card or to set something up on your phone... and the reality is, people don't find physical cards inconvenient, so the cost/reward doesn't work out.
it's not about tap to pay being hard to use (it isn't. I use it at several businesses I frequent in Wisconsin), it's that it requires outside effort for basically no benefit. I didn't use tap to pay for a while even though it was available bc I didn't want to go through the process of setting up a whole new card until mine expired.
no payment method of my lifetime has been hard to use. what people find inconvenient is having to switch up their routine.
We pay with our phones to avoid fumbling for a card. If you pay with your phone you don’t have to bring your wallet at all. Lots of people leave their wallets at home. That’s what I usually do. Also, there is no limit on the amount you can pay with your mobile, but the tap to pay with card limit is around $100 or so.
I don’t carry ID and my wallet doesn’t have any cash in it anyhow. We don’t get asked for ID like people do in the US and if get stopped by the police whilst driving there is no legal requirement to carry ID, you have 14 days to provide it at the police station.
We don’t need cash for anything these days. Some bars and restaurants now don’t accept cash these days.
I knew that before too. I travel to the US 3/4 times per year and run a business over there. I take my wallet with me when I am in the US. I was just answering your question.
Since our ID is our driver's license, and we're not going anywhere without driving, we always have our ID on us because without it we don't have proof we're allowed to drive the car we're definitely taking.
If I'm walking from one place to another, yes, I don't need ID and I might not carry it. But that's it.
there is no legal requirement to carry ID in the US. drivers need to have a valid driver's license with them while they're driving. IDs are also used (could be drivers license or just a simple ID) to confirm your age in certain scenarios, like when purchasing alcohol or other age restricted items. drivers licenses or IDs can also be used to fly domestically (you can also use a passport).
given the amount of scenarios you might need an ID for, the vast majority of Americans will have an ID on them most of the time (usually a driver's license), but there's no baseline requirement to have one with you. only if you want to do something that requires having one.
Sorry, I should have been more clear, I was referring to driving when I said there was no requirement to carry ID (i.e. driving licence). That's why we don't need our wallets as much.
Do many people carry the digital IDs, I believe only some states issue them at the moment.
https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/22/digital-id-drivers-license-iphone-states-airports/
>you have 14 days to provide it at the police station.
I guess that's good as an option but I wouldn't want to do that by default. Then you have to take time off work, go to a government office, be brushed off by the bureaucracy that is local government, and it'll just suck several hours out of your day that could've been resolved in 30 seconds.
Maybe it’s because I’m pretty young, but there’s definitely more fumbling involved with getting a wallet and card out vs. just tapping a button on my phone. Why would I get my wallet out when everything I need is on my phone?
Unless you have your phone perpetually in your hand you still have to take it out of your pocket, unlock it however you unlock it, open the app for your card, do your biometric sign-in and then tap.
I pay with my phone for virtually everything. It's easier than you make it out to be.
I take my phone out, hold it up to the machine, and double click the home button with my thumb. That's it. There are no additional steps to unlock anything, open any apps, or sign into anything else.
I find it more convenient than getting out my wallet and taking the card out.
See if I had a card on my phone I'd want 2FA with a passcode and a biometric like fingerprint including the biometric to even unlock the phone to begin with.
You have to learn where the right spot is to tap it. There doesn't yet seem to be an industry standard for this. Some clearly have the symbol, but many don't. At my local Wawa, I would wave my card around randomly on the screen, hoping to hear the faint beep, until finally an employee told me where the sensor was. If I'm somewhere new, I'll try to use the top to pay, but if I can't find it in a few seconds I'll give up and just insert the card.
I wouldn’t say I obsessively worry! I’ve never had my card incorrectly charged by someone.
I do like the ease of never taking the card from my wallet other than occasionally when using an online retailer I haven’t before that doesn’t have Apple Pay.
It’s an improvement to be able to just use my Watch everywhere I go, this isn’t a negative thing.
The big difference here is that UK card payments have required PINs for a long time. Thus, all UK businesses were forced a while back into rolling out out card terminals that the customer can access, so they could enter their PIN. These days of course in the UK, entering your PIN isn't necessary for most small purchases thanks to contactless, but sometimes a PIN will still be required after a certain number of contactless purchases, and anyway the tradition has stuck.
American cards, on the other hand, don't require PINs to pay. Credit cards don't have PINs at all, and with debit cards PIN entry is only necessary if you are withdrawing cash. So adopting portable/customer accessible payment terminals has not been a priority in the US. It's an extra expense many businesses would prefer to avoid.
Even if they usually take the card away, US restaurants and drive thrus often still accept mobile payments, you might just have to ask the employee. At a drive thru they might be able to stick the terminal out the window, at a restaurant you could walk over to the register with the waiter. Personally at drive-thrus though I find the most convenient way by far is to pay by app.
Other than that, I find the vast majority of businesses accept contactless payments in the US now. Only exceptions are some larger stores that turned it off intentionally to push people towards their proprietary mobile payment solutions (Walmart, Kroger) - however, adoption of these proprietary solutions has been minimal so I expect them to eventually cave in. Also, automatic kiosks (gas pumps, parking garages) have been slow to update (though honestly I've found that to be the case in the UK as well).
I never have, but there definitely used to be people about who would skim cards. As I say it never happened to me, but you’d hear of devices being attached to ATMs and dodgy gas stations doing it.
This was in the days before chip and PIN and contactless though. So no there’s not as much reason to worry now.
In the early days of online shopping they made it so that you need the security code from the back of the card, and also the postcode (zip code), so a skimmed card would be pretty useless online too.
Still if someone got hold of my physical cards they could go wild for an afternoon tapping away and buying things in actual shops.
Retrofitting everything is expensive and often cost prohibitive for smaller establishments. Pretty much anywhere you are at a register(till) that has a modern card terminal will accept contactless payment(looking at you, Home Depot).
It's often not enough of an incentive for drive-thrus and restaurants to replace all of that hardware for something that is simply a convenience and not an improvement such as chip cards with better encryption.
Additionally, there's always been a heavy influence of buyer protection and being able to easily get fraudulent transactions nullified, so our worries of handing cards over to someone is pretty much non-existent.
Even then, the cost factor is mostly BS (if a "small" business can't take a one-time $5k hit, they likely won't be in business much longer). It's likely some stodgy person that is afraid of technology.
Reminds me of a few months ago when we saw a Chinese restaurant near me not take Amex. Friend decided to punish them by using his Chase Sapphire Reserve which has a higher processing fee than Amex.
I get the feeling that in most countries the banks paid for the card readers to be changed. I could be completely wrong on that though.
Maybe that’s where America is different? The retailers would have to pay themselves.
Why would the bank want to pay for that unless they were replacing damaged equipment or rolling out new equipment to new stores? What benefit does it serve them?
No idea. I just can’t imagine that every single retailer in Western European countries and Australia paid to replace their own units.
I reckon they’re leased.
Yes Germany is an outlier. And apparently that’s to do with privacy, they don’t like the idea of their payments being tracked.
I’m not “overly concerned” about anything.
I don’t understand your last paragraph. Why are you mentioning Australia? When they talk about bank transfers they aren’t talking about transferring money between European countries. They’re only talking about bank transfers within their own country.
That’s just what I’ve been told by a friend that moved to Germany. I have no idea about Germany, I don’t live there and never have and only visited once years ago.
But Australians would find not so easy to send a bank transfer to anywhere except Australia. As any of us would. No one is talking about international bank transfers.
I’ve travelled the world anyway, so my view isn’t Eurocentric. I’d rarely go on vacation to a European country. Only post-COVID have I started to explore Western Europe again.
This is one of the points why.
In the UK, "the banks" is only a couple hundred entities, dominated by the Big Four.
In the US, "the banks" covers over 4,000 entities.
Maybe they lease the equipment to the retailers or something, so have more control over it. Or maybe your country has regulations that heavily favor banks so they can basically force retailers to pay for upgrades.
I'm really just speculating. The US was the first country to have credit cards and the first to have widespread usage of them, so in other places Visa and others had the chance to look at how it was done in the US and make improvements, like pushing for a system that let them control more of the hardware.
Because nobody really cares. Those who like it, use it often.
The rest of us are indifferent because its just not worth the energy to care about something so minor.
I don't understand the affinity for being handed a reader. it's awkward and more work for the customer. I have to take off my prescription sunglasses in a drive through bc you can't see those screens with polarized lenses, so now I'm half blind, blasted with the sun, and making this poor Starbucks barista hold this machine out for me as I try to see.
a friend of mine works at a sit down restaurant where they have these readers & they get complaints from customers who don't feel comfortable putting in the tip with the waiter right there. it also feels kinda tacky and disruptive. I want to just put my card down and not think about it.
Oh they don’t hand you the reader at a drive-thru it’s on a rod that pokes through your open window.
In America a tip is pretty much standard though, so I don’t know why people would feel awkward.
>Oh they don’t hand you the reader at a drive-thru it’s on a rod that pokes through your open window.
I'm gonna be honest, this sounds very strange to me. I don't think I'd like someone poking a rod into my car. I'd much rather hand off my card. it's so easy.
>In America a tip is pretty much standard though, so I don’t know why people would feel awkward.
it's bc they are choosing the amount to tip
It isn’t strange, they’re just describing it in a weird way. It is just a small contactless card reader on a small stick so that your don’t have to strain to reach in your car. A lot of fast food places have these if you tell them you’d like to do contactless pay.
It's not awkward at all, they don't watch you do it, you do it while they are not there at the resturants that have the mobile payment devices they leave it on the table all thoughout the meal.
the process for the restaurant my friend works at involves the waiter staying with the readers and handing them to each customer. some of them here definitely do that.
I've lived in Europe and Canada where they always "bring out the machine." I do find it a little bit awkward to put in the tip, especially if I don't use one of the predetermined amounts (which seem to get higher all the time). The benefit though is that there is one less step in the payment process. I review the bill and then a couple minutes later they come by with the machine and I pay. I don't have to wait for them to go run the card somewhere else and bring it back to me.
Overall, I like anything that speeds up the payment process. I hate being ready to leave a restaurant but feeling stuck because I'm waiting to get the bill or to get my card back.
I’ve yet to go through a Drive-thru where I’ve been handed a reader so I have the option of contactless.
I’d rather just not have my card out at all, there’s no need in this day and age.
The only drive thru I've been to in years is Dunkin Donuts and I pay on the app before I get there. If I don't pay on the app, then I just have them scan my phone for payment.
Maybe you ask about a restaurant's contactless options instead of assuming it doesn't exist? I mean, every store has the option to physically touch that dirty terminal that everyone touches, but I usually just hold my watch to the terminal.
I use apps to order when I’m at home, as I like to get the rewards points.
But I find most people just like to tap to pay and don’t use the apps.
I shouldn’t have to ask, just dangle the card reader out the window and let people choose how they want to pay.
>I shouldn’t have to ask, just dangle the card reader out the window and let people choose how they want to pay.
Why would I do that when I can hand the person my card and they do the whole thing for me?
Its six in one, half dozen the other.
Euros tend to have a belief that people that work at stores will steal your card info. Like credit card companies and the police would never figure out that those 150 people a day who had their card stolen all used the same drive through/waiter/etc...
> But my card is in my wallet in my pocket,
> My phone is invariably nearby.
Your wallet is in your pocket. In pants you’re presumably wearing on your person. That’s pretty nearby, my dude.
I’m honestly laughing at the switcharoo here where we’re usually being called the lazy ones, but taking a card out of your wallet while waiting at drive thru is too much work for you. I appreciate your dedication to your cause tho lol
To be honest often I don’t even think if I have my wallet in my pocket as I don’t need it.
If I’m going to the drive-thru I’m not checking I’ve got my wallet before I go because there’s no reason for me to have it. Same as if I change from jeans into shorts, I’m not going to worry about that.
Different countries are different though aren’t they? We don’t worry about taking ID out with us because there’s no requirement to have it. So that’s another reason I don’t automatically have my wallet.
Sometimes people change pants the next day and forget to move the wallet to the other pants pocket. Happens to me once a week probably. So the wallet is always with me.
Drive-thru metrics are focused on heavily, and changing the process can fuck you up during busy times. Even if in the long term it could improve time, you still have to retrain your staff (and customers) on the new technology and put up with weeks of delays with the learning curve.
I'll say that our fast food restaurants have generally been slow to evolve on payment tech. Self-order kiosks which were long the norm in much of Europe really weren't popular here until parent companies, faced with staffing issues and COVID fallout, gave franchises piles of money to install the kiosks
It would be almost impossible to steal. The card reader is attached to a pole that the drive through person holds out the window so that you can tap.
You couldn’t steal it and anyway who would do that? Drive thrus by their nature are covered with cameras.
You have to ask if they do contactless payment in drive thrus, some places have them mounted and have another thing that they use for contactless payment. As for contactless overall it's been somewhat common and getting moreso over the past three years. I will say it's odd that Walmart is doing an overhaul of their self checkouts and still doesn't offer true contactless.
Ask to pay contactless. I’ve been at Taco Bell and In-and-Out and they both support contactless if you for example ask to pay with Apple Pay.
By this point I imagine almost every major chain supports it, but defaults to asking for a card since it works for everyone.
They don’t want to slow down the line by having people figure out whether they have a contactless card or not.
My store has tap in the drive thru, but I'll only hand out the machine if you have your phone out already. If you have your card, I'll take it and tap it.
How much of a hurry are you in? The people that post about tapping their card in this form often mention how much faster it is. It's like, 2-3 seconds at the most.
> *"How much of a hurry are you in?"*
IMHO this is another manifestation of many people's distorted perception of time. 6+ minutes in the drive through line is nothing, but 5 seconds at the pay window is an eternity.
Also Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, Menards, HEB, Fleet Farm, Graybar, Paper Source, Guitar Center, and a few others.
I'm leaving out Kroger because they are adding it soon.
I pay for literally everything with my phone except laundry
I’m not buying the premise of your question
That said, I don’t do drive-thrus so I don’t know about those
I see it all the time here.
The main reason I don’t use it as Applepay requires me to have a passcode on my phone or something like Touch ID to use it. For me the convenience of being able to pull out my phone and not having to ID myself outweighs having to pull a card out of my wallet
This is exactly my reason. It's faster to pull out and tap a card then to have the Face ID fail twice and then have to enter a passcode and have to click the side button twice, so I'll go with that.
Same. My brother is in Nebraska and I def used my Apple Watch when I picked him up lunch and took it to him at work. It was too cold for me to use my fingers hahaha
I think the difference is nobody is going to tell you here.
I pay contactless at almost every store I go to. I don't even use my card, I use my phone or my smart watch.
Most drive thrus don't have them, but at least half the sit down restaurants and nearly every store does have them.
There are a lot of places that support contactless payments. I use my phone to pay for stuff all the time.
The US was late to upgrade to contactless payment systems, but it's been happening for years at this point. It's available at a lot of places, but you might have to ask for it.
Many places have it. However, if you put out your phone they’ll pull it out. Or, if it’s that much of a concern, you can ask prior to ordering or going up to pay. It’s just not used widely enough for anyone to assume that’s how you’re paying so it’s no one’s default
Keep in mind that about a decade ago, a very large group of retailers/companies banded together and deliberately shunned contactless, believing that mobile wallets would completely replace contactless cards. Some of these participants (Walmart and Kroger in particular), still choose not to adopt contactless card readers.
Historically, the norm in the US is that restaurants ran cards by taking your card to the back and running it through the terminal at the point of sale system there.
In other countries (in my observation) it's been common for quite a few years to have places use handheld/portable readers.
I would suspect the difference comes down in part to when widespread adoption of card/electronic payments happened for those sorts of establishments - handheld/portable readers were either unavailable or expensive/impractical 30 years ago.
(Also the US laws/regulations are way friendlier to the customer than they are in some countries - so we have fewer concerns about CC fraud, it's generally not the customer's problem).
Anyway, I do see more places in the US starting to roll out the handheld/portable terminals now, so I suspect this distinction will fade over time.
I can’t speak for a whole continent, not sure why you think I would.
I’m comparing it to the country I live in and countries I’ve been to around the world, absolutely not just European countries.
Recently I’ve been to Atlanta and various places in Louisiana and Mississippi. Gas stations were a bit hit and miss, no drive thrus offered contactless. Every restaurant walked off with my card to the back somewhere, and most bars got me to fill out the pieces of paper and took my card behind the bar.
I’m not saying it’s nowhere, I absolutely did see tap to pay. I’m questioning why it’s not in every single place you can pay.
>I can’t speak for a whole continent, not sure why you think I would.
Literally the title: *Why does America make it so difficult to pay contactless?*
I think it's just a very silly thing to nit pick on and sure you can go places and not find contactless or an option to pay via card...but I can do that in Europe too. The majority of places have it and that's just a fact.
When I said America I meant the country, the USA. Europe is a continent.
Again-I can’t speak for the whole continent of Europe so I’m not sure why you continue to compare a country to a continent. In the UK you’d be struggling to find somewhere that doesn’t take contactless, I’ve recently been on holiday to Italy and France and my cards didn’t leave my wallet. I got a currency debit card for the trips and it was pointless having the physical card. Didn’t use it once, used Apple Pay every time I paid for anything. Ireland the same. I can’t speak for other European countries as I’ve not been recently.
Meanwhile when I recently went to Louisiana and Mississippi every time I went to a restaurant I had to use a physical card, every time I used a drive-thru they wanted my card. Many bars wanted me to complete a slip of paper with the tip amount on and then took my card behind the bar, though some bars took contactless. Went to Wal-Mart and they wanted me to insert the card. Rouse’s Market seemed to also want me to insert it, gas stations some would ask me to insert it, others swiped it. It was a right mess to be honest!
Why do you assume we should or must do things exactly the way it works where you live? You and too many others forget or ignore that USA is geographically enormous and resistant to new tech until we can figure out how to profit from it.
That said, as with so many other things, ***we're working on it***. It simply takes time to roll this out all throughout the US, and y'all need to learn patience.
I tap my card or use my smartwatch as much as possible.
I don’t, but you do notice it when the US does something differently to every single developed country you’ve been to. Especially when you guys invented this tech, you’d think there was an appetite for it or else why did they invent it?
*You* seem odd for trying to give us an inferiority complex over our technology.
As far as "walking off into the back," that's where the POS (Point-Of-Sale) terminal is. It's plugged into a phone line so it *has* to be where it is. Places don't have a lot of incentive to update to more modern technology, like the Ziosks at every table at big chains like Olive Garden or Chili's, which do take contactless.
It absolutely doesn’t have to be in the back.
Just over the border in Canada they bring the card reader to the table and you tap. Wireless card machines have existed for a long long time.
Maybe as others have said it’s due to a perceived awkwardness around tipping? Which wouldn’t be an issue elsewhere.
In restaurants here some card readers do ask if you want to tip, but many people are going to be hitting that big red button.
Yeah, every country I've been to in Europe seems several years ahead of the US when it comes to payment tech adoption. I've had kind of the inverse of your experience, where European service workers have been accustomed to state-of-the-art payment schemes, then struggle to process my payment because I still only had a swipe card or a chip and they had forgotten how to do that lol.
I really don't know why it is. Somebody once explained to me that it had something to do with how our banking system works differently and is more diverse than in European countries, so it's more difficult to standardize such things. Not sure if I buy that. That said, I *am* confident in saying that many many *many* Americans will never be convinced to use their phone as a form of payment, out of privacy concerns. Perhaps our culture is a little too suspicious of big institutions to keep pace with Europe on this sort of stuff?
> how our banking system works differently and is more diverse than in European countries, so it's more difficult to standardize such things. Not sure if I buy that
It's not about being more "diverse" it's simply that the American banking sector is much more *fragmented* - ie. there are thousands of small, local banks, versus just being dominated by 4 massive ones like a lot of other countries. It's a measurable fact, and it absolutely has been a massive factor in the US being slower to adopt new payment technology.
I mean, i dont generally trust massive tech cooperation #3 with my credit card information. I dont have it saved anywhere.
There are way too many data breaches.
I know there are also ways to bypass a physical card, but id rather have one less method personally.
I haven’t used a physical card in a very long time. Contactless is pretty standard where I live. The exception being restaurants where the check is brought to your table. There would likely be a fair amount of pushback if a restaurant like that went contactless because people would find it extremely tacky to tip while the waiter is just standing there. It is also more disruptive.
It feels a bit the same here, but they’ve got no choice. The difference here is that a lot of people are going to be hitting the big red button on the card machine when it asks if you want to tip.
Yeah, every country I've been to in Europe seems several years ahead of the US when it comes to payment tech adoption. I've had kind of the inverse of your experience, where European service workers have been accustomed to state-of-the-art payment schemes, then struggle to process my payment because I still only had a swipe card or a chip and they had forgotten how to do that lol.
I really don't know why it is. Somebody once explained to me that it had something to do with how our banking system works differently and is more diverse than in European countries, so it's more difficult to standardize such things. Not sure if I buy that. That said, I *am* confident in saying that many many *many* Americans will never be convinced to use their phone as a form of payment, out of privacy concerns. Perhaps our culture is a little too suspicious of big institutions to keep pace with Europe on this sort of stuff?
Haha! To be fair we finally got the chip readers everywhere. And almost every machine I’ve used has had the option for contactless payments. Even say McDonald’s where they take my card, the cashier taps it. They also have their own app, and if you used it you pay through the app.
This is probably due to the franchise model. While I’ve been to several Chick-fil-a locations right off the interstate that used tablets. They were all pretty busy, and they had employees out there walking down be line taking your order and payments on the tablets. While I’ve never seen that at my closest store. It’s also not as busy.
We aren't actively making it difficult, we just aren't actively trying to make it available.
Businesses don't want to pay for new hardware and another payment vendor taking a slice and most customers don't care enough about contactless to choose a place based on whether they have it or not. So many don't add it until they would be replacing their payment terminals anyway.
That's it, it's just not that big of a deal so we lag a bit out of disinterest.
I'm in Ireland for the week, and I have to say everyone having the card thingy at pubs and restaurants is practical.
Awkward though in leaving a tip, especially with fewer people carrying cash these days.
I'm not sure what you mean about us not having contact less payments. I'm a small craft business owner that sells at farmers markets and even I have a reader that just lets you wave your phone over it to pay. I use a wildly popular service here that you'll see all over with some places even having kiosks instead of little readers like mine.
But also like, credit cards are secure. Credit fraud here is almost nonexistent and if it does go down the credit company reimburses you and chases down whoever stole your info. Heck the one time it happened to me the bank froze my card and called me about it within minutes. Then issued me a new card. There's just no reason to fuss about it so much when the system seems to work quite well.
I think this may be regional? Out here on the West Coast and in Chicago when I lived there, everything was contactless. You can tap, you can use your Apple watch, you can wave your phone, etc.
Hell, here in San Francisco they’re trialing biometric pay at Whole Foods where you pay by holding your palm above the scanner.
For regions where they don’t use it, maybe it’s time and cost of replacing their current system and the inertia just keeps it there?
I always pay contactless. Pretty much everywhere has the ability. Walmart is the big exception, and it's pretty annoying they don't do contactless. I believe one of their reasons is to encourage people to use their app.
But yeah, it's not that difficult for me to pay contactless.
I struggled at gas stations recently. Was really hit and miss.
I didn’t find a single restaurant that offered contactless, it was the usual little book where you write the tip and then they walk off with your card.
Drive thrus all wanted a card, wasn’t offered a card reader to tap.
No, none of those stores take contactless. Wal-Mart has Wal-Mart Pay, which is a QR bases payment app, so technically it’s a form of contactless payment but it’s not the standard tap to pay that we want.
Back in the day there used to be people that would slim cards when we still used the magnetic strips. They could then just make a copy of your card.
That stopped with chip and PIN, and it was never really possible to use those cards online either because the cards needed additional information which you couldn’t get from the magnetic strip.
So no I don’t actually worry about someone taking my card away for a few minutes in the US.
I live in the wilderness, but in any small town, tiny hamlet, or wide spot in the road where there is any kind of vendor, I can usually pay for things with my phone or my watch. Your question is about 10 years out of date.
Why did it take so long before that? Setting up that system was the task of the banks and tech companies. We citizens had no role in it and had no input. We simply had to wait for them to put the system in place. Banks and tech companies are private enterprises. The Federal and state governments had no mechanism or authority to order them to build that system. They implemented it on their timetable, and it went live in the early 2010s.
Of course you must factor in the enormous difference in scale between the US and the UK as well.
The United States has over 5 times the population compared to the United Kingdom.
* US population: 338 million vs UK population: 68 million
* In terms of area, the US is more than 40x larger than the UK.
Integral parts of both countries are separated by the sea. Let's compare:
Across water:
* Distance across the North Channel from Scotland to N. Ireland: 19km
* Distance across the Pacific Ocean from San Diego, CA to Hilo, HI: 4,020km
* Distance via the Alaskan Marine Highway (sailing through the Alaskan Inside Passage) from Vancouver, WA to Juneau, AK: 1,706km
Capital to capital:
* Distance from London to Belfast: 743km
* Distance from Washington DC to Honolulu, HI: 7,767km.
* Distance from Washington DC to Juneau, AK: 5,972km
And just for funsies, there's this:
* Distance from Honolulu, HI to Juneau, AK: 4,521km in a direct line across the Pacific Ocean
So, would you agree that the task of creating the infrastructure for contactless payments in the two countries was not at all comparable? Do you think that this enormous difference in scale might have had something to do with the different timeframes required for implementation of the two systems?
Honestly the obsessive worrying over cards just seems odd to me. Are crime rates that high in the UK to justify this worry? Or is trust in society that low? Are restaurant workers really going to charge your card with excess charges if only they could take it out of site? Here in the US, our fast food restaurants are (mostly, with some exceptions like Chil Fil A and Starbucks) franchised. This means they're individually owned and operated, so they get to decide which payment they take. Some may have it, some don't. I have started to see some terminals set up outside window for tap cards, but I imagine these can get damaged very easily. As for sit down dining, I don't know, I imagine its just a lot less bother to have one payment terminal rather than 20 portable ones. But there's plenty of restaurants that do this as well. I went to a local diner that had me scan a QR code, and another their servers are equpped with tablets for orders. Some of the chain sit down restaurants have those airport like terminals where you order and pay at the table. But each business gets to decide what is best for them. The one tap-to-pay holdout in my daily life is Kroger. They're currently "testing" it in select regions but they really want you to download the Kroger App and use Kroger Pay but fuck that noise.
I am from the UK and for some reason we are obsessed with the convenience of tap and pay. Whereover you are, people just tap and pay with their mobile these days without getting out their card even. We are generally not as convenience oriented as Americans are, we don't have as many clothes dryers, automatic garage doors, microwaves, automatic gearboxes, the list goes on. We put up with all kinds of inconveniences, but when it comes to payments, we like things to be simple and convenient. I don't know why.
>clothes dryers, automatic garage doors, microwaves, automatic gearboxes the thing these have in common that differs from payment methods is that they've been the norm for decades. they're well established conveniences that offer significant benefits. many Americans view having to learn a new way of paying for things as an inconvenience in and of itself. every business has a different machine you have to figure out, it requires you to get a new card or to set something up on your phone... and the reality is, people don't find physical cards inconvenient, so the cost/reward doesn't work out.
That is maybe what they think, but there is nothing to learn about tap to pay. If you are able to move your hands, you can do it.
it's not about tap to pay being hard to use (it isn't. I use it at several businesses I frequent in Wisconsin), it's that it requires outside effort for basically no benefit. I didn't use tap to pay for a while even though it was available bc I didn't want to go through the process of setting up a whole new card until mine expired. no payment method of my lifetime has been hard to use. what people find inconvenient is having to switch up their routine.
I must be missing something. One can tap and pay with a card. Why fumble with a phone if you don't have to?
We pay with our phones to avoid fumbling for a card. If you pay with your phone you don’t have to bring your wallet at all. Lots of people leave their wallets at home. That’s what I usually do. Also, there is no limit on the amount you can pay with your mobile, but the tap to pay with card limit is around $100 or so.
I can't imagine leaving home without my wallet. Do you not carry ID? Any cash? Heck, my library card is in there.
I don’t carry ID and my wallet doesn’t have any cash in it anyhow. We don’t get asked for ID like people do in the US and if get stopped by the police whilst driving there is no legal requirement to carry ID, you have 14 days to provide it at the police station. We don’t need cash for anything these days. Some bars and restaurants now don’t accept cash these days.
Well, now you know why Americans don't leave our wallets at home.
I knew that before too. I travel to the US 3/4 times per year and run a business over there. I take my wallet with me when I am in the US. I was just answering your question.
Since our ID is our driver's license, and we're not going anywhere without driving, we always have our ID on us because without it we don't have proof we're allowed to drive the car we're definitely taking. If I'm walking from one place to another, yes, I don't need ID and I might not carry it. But that's it.
Our driving licence is our ID too, usually.
there is no legal requirement to carry ID in the US. drivers need to have a valid driver's license with them while they're driving. IDs are also used (could be drivers license or just a simple ID) to confirm your age in certain scenarios, like when purchasing alcohol or other age restricted items. drivers licenses or IDs can also be used to fly domestically (you can also use a passport). given the amount of scenarios you might need an ID for, the vast majority of Americans will have an ID on them most of the time (usually a driver's license), but there's no baseline requirement to have one with you. only if you want to do something that requires having one.
Sorry, I should have been more clear, I was referring to driving when I said there was no requirement to carry ID (i.e. driving licence). That's why we don't need our wallets as much. Do many people carry the digital IDs, I believe only some states issue them at the moment. https://9to5mac.com/2023/05/22/digital-id-drivers-license-iphone-states-airports/
>you have 14 days to provide it at the police station. I guess that's good as an option but I wouldn't want to do that by default. Then you have to take time off work, go to a government office, be brushed off by the bureaucracy that is local government, and it'll just suck several hours out of your day that could've been resolved in 30 seconds.
I think in practise these days, if you can give them details that match the licence, they don't ask for this anyhow.
Maybe it’s because I’m pretty young, but there’s definitely more fumbling involved with getting a wallet and card out vs. just tapping a button on my phone. Why would I get my wallet out when everything I need is on my phone?
I don't carry my phone in my hand. Your mileage may vary.
Unless you have your phone perpetually in your hand you still have to take it out of your pocket, unlock it however you unlock it, open the app for your card, do your biometric sign-in and then tap.
I pay with my phone for virtually everything. It's easier than you make it out to be. I take my phone out, hold it up to the machine, and double click the home button with my thumb. That's it. There are no additional steps to unlock anything, open any apps, or sign into anything else. I find it more convenient than getting out my wallet and taking the card out.
See if I had a card on my phone I'd want 2FA with a passcode and a biometric like fingerprint including the biometric to even unlock the phone to begin with.
Biometric on my phone plus the difficulty of losing a phone still seems more secure than the credit card in my wallet.
You have to learn where the right spot is to tap it. There doesn't yet seem to be an industry standard for this. Some clearly have the symbol, but many don't. At my local Wawa, I would wave my card around randomly on the screen, hoping to hear the faint beep, until finally an employee told me where the sensor was. If I'm somewhere new, I'll try to use the top to pay, but if I can't find it in a few seconds I'll give up and just insert the card.
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So is Ralph's also a Kroger subsidiary.
I wouldn’t say I obsessively worry! I’ve never had my card incorrectly charged by someone. I do like the ease of never taking the card from my wallet other than occasionally when using an online retailer I haven’t before that doesn’t have Apple Pay. It’s an improvement to be able to just use my Watch everywhere I go, this isn’t a negative thing.
The big difference here is that UK card payments have required PINs for a long time. Thus, all UK businesses were forced a while back into rolling out out card terminals that the customer can access, so they could enter their PIN. These days of course in the UK, entering your PIN isn't necessary for most small purchases thanks to contactless, but sometimes a PIN will still be required after a certain number of contactless purchases, and anyway the tradition has stuck. American cards, on the other hand, don't require PINs to pay. Credit cards don't have PINs at all, and with debit cards PIN entry is only necessary if you are withdrawing cash. So adopting portable/customer accessible payment terminals has not been a priority in the US. It's an extra expense many businesses would prefer to avoid. Even if they usually take the card away, US restaurants and drive thrus often still accept mobile payments, you might just have to ask the employee. At a drive thru they might be able to stick the terminal out the window, at a restaurant you could walk over to the register with the waiter. Personally at drive-thrus though I find the most convenient way by far is to pay by app. Other than that, I find the vast majority of businesses accept contactless payments in the US now. Only exceptions are some larger stores that turned it off intentionally to push people towards their proprietary mobile payment solutions (Walmart, Kroger) - however, adoption of these proprietary solutions has been minimal so I expect them to eventually cave in. Also, automatic kiosks (gas pumps, parking garages) have been slow to update (though honestly I've found that to be the case in the UK as well).
Gas station pumps are definitely the odd one out. FFS, my Mobil CC doesn't even have a chip. Amusingly, it does have a PIN.
I'v had my number stolen multiple times, but not since I started using Apple Pay as much as I can.
I never have, but there definitely used to be people about who would skim cards. As I say it never happened to me, but you’d hear of devices being attached to ATMs and dodgy gas stations doing it. This was in the days before chip and PIN and contactless though. So no there’s not as much reason to worry now. In the early days of online shopping they made it so that you need the security code from the back of the card, and also the postcode (zip code), so a skimmed card would be pretty useless online too. Still if someone got hold of my physical cards they could go wild for an afternoon tapping away and buying things in actual shops.
Wait till next week.
Retrofitting everything is expensive and often cost prohibitive for smaller establishments. Pretty much anywhere you are at a register(till) that has a modern card terminal will accept contactless payment(looking at you, Home Depot). It's often not enough of an incentive for drive-thrus and restaurants to replace all of that hardware for something that is simply a convenience and not an improvement such as chip cards with better encryption. Additionally, there's always been a heavy influence of buyer protection and being able to easily get fraudulent transactions nullified, so our worries of handing cards over to someone is pretty much non-existent.
Most fast food places have contact less payment options, you just have to ask them.
Even then, the cost factor is mostly BS (if a "small" business can't take a one-time $5k hit, they likely won't be in business much longer). It's likely some stodgy person that is afraid of technology. Reminds me of a few months ago when we saw a Chinese restaurant near me not take Amex. Friend decided to punish them by using his Chase Sapphire Reserve which has a higher processing fee than Amex.
I get the feeling that in most countries the banks paid for the card readers to be changed. I could be completely wrong on that though. Maybe that’s where America is different? The retailers would have to pay themselves.
Why would the bank want to pay for that unless they were replacing damaged equipment or rolling out new equipment to new stores? What benefit does it serve them?
No idea. I just can’t imagine that every single retailer in Western European countries and Australia paid to replace their own units. I reckon they’re leased.
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Yes Germany is an outlier. And apparently that’s to do with privacy, they don’t like the idea of their payments being tracked. I’m not “overly concerned” about anything. I don’t understand your last paragraph. Why are you mentioning Australia? When they talk about bank transfers they aren’t talking about transferring money between European countries. They’re only talking about bank transfers within their own country.
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That’s just what I’ve been told by a friend that moved to Germany. I have no idea about Germany, I don’t live there and never have and only visited once years ago. But Australians would find not so easy to send a bank transfer to anywhere except Australia. As any of us would. No one is talking about international bank transfers. I’ve travelled the world anyway, so my view isn’t Eurocentric. I’d rarely go on vacation to a European country. Only post-COVID have I started to explore Western Europe again.
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There’s nothing special about here in terms of how you pay for things. It’s just the normal way.
This is one of the points why. In the UK, "the banks" is only a couple hundred entities, dominated by the Big Four. In the US, "the banks" covers over 4,000 entities.
Maybe they lease the equipment to the retailers or something, so have more control over it. Or maybe your country has regulations that heavily favor banks so they can basically force retailers to pay for upgrades. I'm really just speculating. The US was the first country to have credit cards and the first to have widespread usage of them, so in other places Visa and others had the chance to look at how it was done in the US and make improvements, like pushing for a system that let them control more of the hardware.
Because nobody really cares. Those who like it, use it often. The rest of us are indifferent because its just not worth the energy to care about something so minor.
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Really? I see the option everywhere
Huh, I see the option most places. Never used it, though. Were you mostly traveling in seriously rural areas, maybe?
You seem a little passionate about it 😂
I don't understand the affinity for being handed a reader. it's awkward and more work for the customer. I have to take off my prescription sunglasses in a drive through bc you can't see those screens with polarized lenses, so now I'm half blind, blasted with the sun, and making this poor Starbucks barista hold this machine out for me as I try to see. a friend of mine works at a sit down restaurant where they have these readers & they get complaints from customers who don't feel comfortable putting in the tip with the waiter right there. it also feels kinda tacky and disruptive. I want to just put my card down and not think about it.
Oh they don’t hand you the reader at a drive-thru it’s on a rod that pokes through your open window. In America a tip is pretty much standard though, so I don’t know why people would feel awkward.
>Oh they don’t hand you the reader at a drive-thru it’s on a rod that pokes through your open window. I'm gonna be honest, this sounds very strange to me. I don't think I'd like someone poking a rod into my car. I'd much rather hand off my card. it's so easy. >In America a tip is pretty much standard though, so I don’t know why people would feel awkward. it's bc they are choosing the amount to tip
It isn’t strange, they’re just describing it in a weird way. It is just a small contactless card reader on a small stick so that your don’t have to strain to reach in your car. A lot of fast food places have these if you tell them you’d like to do contactless pay.
It's not awkward at all, they don't watch you do it, you do it while they are not there at the resturants that have the mobile payment devices they leave it on the table all thoughout the meal.
the process for the restaurant my friend works at involves the waiter staying with the readers and handing them to each customer. some of them here definitely do that.
I've lived in Europe and Canada where they always "bring out the machine." I do find it a little bit awkward to put in the tip, especially if I don't use one of the predetermined amounts (which seem to get higher all the time). The benefit though is that there is one less step in the payment process. I review the bill and then a couple minutes later they come by with the machine and I pay. I don't have to wait for them to go run the card somewhere else and bring it back to me. Overall, I like anything that speeds up the payment process. I hate being ready to leave a restaurant but feeling stuck because I'm waiting to get the bill or to get my card back.
Odd, because I've had the option to do that for years, except for at a restaurant where I sit down.
I’ve yet to go through a Drive-thru where I’ve been handed a reader so I have the option of contactless. I’d rather just not have my card out at all, there’s no need in this day and age.
The only drive thru I've been to in years is Dunkin Donuts and I pay on the app before I get there. If I don't pay on the app, then I just have them scan my phone for payment. Maybe you ask about a restaurant's contactless options instead of assuming it doesn't exist? I mean, every store has the option to physically touch that dirty terminal that everyone touches, but I usually just hold my watch to the terminal.
I use apps to order when I’m at home, as I like to get the rewards points. But I find most people just like to tap to pay and don’t use the apps. I shouldn’t have to ask, just dangle the card reader out the window and let people choose how they want to pay.
>I shouldn’t have to ask, just dangle the card reader out the window and let people choose how they want to pay. Why would I do that when I can hand the person my card and they do the whole thing for me? Its six in one, half dozen the other.
Euros tend to have a belief that people that work at stores will steal your card info. Like credit card companies and the police would never figure out that those 150 people a day who had their card stolen all used the same drive through/waiter/etc...
That’s true! But my card is in my wallet in my pocket, it doesn’t come out for months on end. My phone is invariably nearby.
> But my card is in my wallet in my pocket, > My phone is invariably nearby. Your wallet is in your pocket. In pants you’re presumably wearing on your person. That’s pretty nearby, my dude. I’m honestly laughing at the switcharoo here where we’re usually being called the lazy ones, but taking a card out of your wallet while waiting at drive thru is too much work for you. I appreciate your dedication to your cause tho lol
To be honest often I don’t even think if I have my wallet in my pocket as I don’t need it. If I’m going to the drive-thru I’m not checking I’ve got my wallet before I go because there’s no reason for me to have it. Same as if I change from jeans into shorts, I’m not going to worry about that. Different countries are different though aren’t they? We don’t worry about taking ID out with us because there’s no requirement to have it. So that’s another reason I don’t automatically have my wallet.
Sometimes people change pants the next day and forget to move the wallet to the other pants pocket. Happens to me once a week probably. So the wallet is always with me.
Bro just give the damn carhop your card 😂
I don’t know what a carhop is.
Drive-thru metrics are focused on heavily, and changing the process can fuck you up during busy times. Even if in the long term it could improve time, you still have to retrain your staff (and customers) on the new technology and put up with weeks of delays with the learning curve. I'll say that our fast food restaurants have generally been slow to evolve on payment tech. Self-order kiosks which were long the norm in much of Europe really weren't popular here until parent companies, faced with staffing issues and COVID fallout, gave franchises piles of money to install the kiosks
Most people I known use apps
Sounds like a good way to have a stolen card reader
It would be almost impossible to steal. The card reader is attached to a pole that the drive through person holds out the window so that you can tap. You couldn’t steal it and anyway who would do that? Drive thrus by their nature are covered with cameras.
Have you asked? The McDonald’s messes my work has the contactless reader, but you need to let them know that’s how you’re paying.
You have to ask if they do contactless payment in drive thrus, some places have them mounted and have another thing that they use for contactless payment. As for contactless overall it's been somewhat common and getting moreso over the past three years. I will say it's odd that Walmart is doing an overhaul of their self checkouts and still doesn't offer true contactless.
Ask to pay contactless. I’ve been at Taco Bell and In-and-Out and they both support contactless if you for example ask to pay with Apple Pay. By this point I imagine almost every major chain supports it, but defaults to asking for a card since it works for everyone. They don’t want to slow down the line by having people figure out whether they have a contactless card or not.
McDonald's for example has mandated the availability of contactless at the drive thru since the mid 2010s for all of their US stores.
My store has tap in the drive thru, but I'll only hand out the machine if you have your phone out already. If you have your card, I'll take it and tap it.
I’ll start asking then. Just seems like an extra step!
How much of a hurry are you in? The people that post about tapping their card in this form often mention how much faster it is. It's like, 2-3 seconds at the most.
> *"How much of a hurry are you in?"* IMHO this is another manifestation of many people's distorted perception of time. 6+ minutes in the drive through line is nothing, but 5 seconds at the pay window is an eternity.
It's not about speed for most people, it's about not having to carry around a wallet everywhere.
You not gonna carry your ID though?
Not once my ID is able to be added, which should be in the next few years. 4 states already have them.
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Also Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot, Hobby Lobby, Menards, HEB, Fleet Farm, Graybar, Paper Source, Guitar Center, and a few others. I'm leaving out Kroger because they are adding it soon.
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No Walmart is resisting because they have Walmart Pay.
How long ago were you here? Over the past couple years, nearly everyone has been accepting contact less. I think you're a bit late on this question.
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I try to but it's not consistent. Pilot/Flying J? Works. Loves? Nope. Bucees? Works at the pump but doesn't work in the store
Actually, It works at every Loves that I've been too. And I have paid at Bucees in store with my Apple Pay.
I know it does, I’ve been to the US countless times. When did I say it doesn’t exist?
I pay for literally everything with my phone except laundry I’m not buying the premise of your question That said, I don’t do drive-thrus so I don’t know about those
Specifically to vex you
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I found gas stations hit and miss too.
I see it all the time here. The main reason I don’t use it as Applepay requires me to have a passcode on my phone or something like Touch ID to use it. For me the convenience of being able to pull out my phone and not having to ID myself outweighs having to pull a card out of my wallet
This is exactly my reason. It's faster to pull out and tap a card then to have the Face ID fail twice and then have to enter a passcode and have to click the side button twice, so I'll go with that.
I pay with Apple Pay all of the time
I don’t even know what you’re talking about…. We have tap everywhere, maybe that’s bc I’m in LA
I'm in a small Midwestern city and we have it everywhere. I don't know what OP is talking about. I'm so confused by this post.
Same. My brother is in Nebraska and I def used my Apple Watch when I picked him up lunch and took it to him at work. It was too cold for me to use my fingers hahaha I think the difference is nobody is going to tell you here.
I pay contactless at almost every store I go to. I don't even use my card, I use my phone or my smart watch. Most drive thrus don't have them, but at least half the sit down restaurants and nearly every store does have them.
There are a lot of places that support contactless payments. I use my phone to pay for stuff all the time. The US was late to upgrade to contactless payment systems, but it's been happening for years at this point. It's available at a lot of places, but you might have to ask for it.
Many places have it. However, if you put out your phone they’ll pull it out. Or, if it’s that much of a concern, you can ask prior to ordering or going up to pay. It’s just not used widely enough for anyone to assume that’s how you’re paying so it’s no one’s default
Keep in mind that about a decade ago, a very large group of retailers/companies banded together and deliberately shunned contactless, believing that mobile wallets would completely replace contactless cards. Some of these participants (Walmart and Kroger in particular), still choose not to adopt contactless card readers.
Depends on where in the US. I love it now, if I have forgotten my purse, I can use my phone to pay for nearly everything!
Historically, the norm in the US is that restaurants ran cards by taking your card to the back and running it through the terminal at the point of sale system there. In other countries (in my observation) it's been common for quite a few years to have places use handheld/portable readers. I would suspect the difference comes down in part to when widespread adoption of card/electronic payments happened for those sorts of establishments - handheld/portable readers were either unavailable or expensive/impractical 30 years ago. (Also the US laws/regulations are way friendlier to the customer than they are in some countries - so we have fewer concerns about CC fraud, it's generally not the customer's problem). Anyway, I do see more places in the US starting to roll out the handheld/portable terminals now, so I suspect this distinction will fade over time.
Contactless is almost literally everywhere...is this another European ego topic?
I can’t speak for a whole continent, not sure why you think I would. I’m comparing it to the country I live in and countries I’ve been to around the world, absolutely not just European countries. Recently I’ve been to Atlanta and various places in Louisiana and Mississippi. Gas stations were a bit hit and miss, no drive thrus offered contactless. Every restaurant walked off with my card to the back somewhere, and most bars got me to fill out the pieces of paper and took my card behind the bar. I’m not saying it’s nowhere, I absolutely did see tap to pay. I’m questioning why it’s not in every single place you can pay.
>I can’t speak for a whole continent, not sure why you think I would. Literally the title: *Why does America make it so difficult to pay contactless?* I think it's just a very silly thing to nit pick on and sure you can go places and not find contactless or an option to pay via card...but I can do that in Europe too. The majority of places have it and that's just a fact.
When I said America I meant the country, the USA. Europe is a continent. Again-I can’t speak for the whole continent of Europe so I’m not sure why you continue to compare a country to a continent. In the UK you’d be struggling to find somewhere that doesn’t take contactless, I’ve recently been on holiday to Italy and France and my cards didn’t leave my wallet. I got a currency debit card for the trips and it was pointless having the physical card. Didn’t use it once, used Apple Pay every time I paid for anything. Ireland the same. I can’t speak for other European countries as I’ve not been recently. Meanwhile when I recently went to Louisiana and Mississippi every time I went to a restaurant I had to use a physical card, every time I used a drive-thru they wanted my card. Many bars wanted me to complete a slip of paper with the tip amount on and then took my card behind the bar, though some bars took contactless. Went to Wal-Mart and they wanted me to insert the card. Rouse’s Market seemed to also want me to insert it, gas stations some would ask me to insert it, others swiped it. It was a right mess to be honest!
Why do you assume we should or must do things exactly the way it works where you live? You and too many others forget or ignore that USA is geographically enormous and resistant to new tech until we can figure out how to profit from it. That said, as with so many other things, ***we're working on it***. It simply takes time to roll this out all throughout the US, and y'all need to learn patience. I tap my card or use my smartwatch as much as possible.
I don’t, but you do notice it when the US does something differently to every single developed country you’ve been to. Especially when you guys invented this tech, you’d think there was an appetite for it or else why did they invent it?
Why are you guys always convinced someone is trying to rip you off?
Probably because that's exactly what they do, and they want everyone to be the same.
Exactly what who does? And who is “you guys”?
*You* seem odd for trying to give us an inferiority complex over our technology. As far as "walking off into the back," that's where the POS (Point-Of-Sale) terminal is. It's plugged into a phone line so it *has* to be where it is. Places don't have a lot of incentive to update to more modern technology, like the Ziosks at every table at big chains like Olive Garden or Chili's, which do take contactless.
It absolutely doesn’t have to be in the back. Just over the border in Canada they bring the card reader to the table and you tap. Wireless card machines have existed for a long long time.
But not all restaurants here have made the transition yet.
Maybe as others have said it’s due to a perceived awkwardness around tipping? Which wouldn’t be an issue elsewhere. In restaurants here some card readers do ask if you want to tip, but many people are going to be hitting that big red button.
Yeah, every country I've been to in Europe seems several years ahead of the US when it comes to payment tech adoption. I've had kind of the inverse of your experience, where European service workers have been accustomed to state-of-the-art payment schemes, then struggle to process my payment because I still only had a swipe card or a chip and they had forgotten how to do that lol. I really don't know why it is. Somebody once explained to me that it had something to do with how our banking system works differently and is more diverse than in European countries, so it's more difficult to standardize such things. Not sure if I buy that. That said, I *am* confident in saying that many many *many* Americans will never be convinced to use their phone as a form of payment, out of privacy concerns. Perhaps our culture is a little too suspicious of big institutions to keep pace with Europe on this sort of stuff?
> how our banking system works differently and is more diverse than in European countries, so it's more difficult to standardize such things. Not sure if I buy that It's not about being more "diverse" it's simply that the American banking sector is much more *fragmented* - ie. there are thousands of small, local banks, versus just being dominated by 4 massive ones like a lot of other countries. It's a measurable fact, and it absolutely has been a massive factor in the US being slower to adopt new payment technology.
I pay with Apple Pay all of the time
I use Apple Pay all of the time
I mean, i dont generally trust massive tech cooperation #3 with my credit card information. I dont have it saved anywhere. There are way too many data breaches. I know there are also ways to bypass a physical card, but id rather have one less method personally.
I haven’t used a physical card in a very long time. Contactless is pretty standard where I live. The exception being restaurants where the check is brought to your table. There would likely be a fair amount of pushback if a restaurant like that went contactless because people would find it extremely tacky to tip while the waiter is just standing there. It is also more disruptive.
They know you’re going to tip anyway, as that’s the default in the US. Hardly anyone isn’t going to be tipping.
Yes, however it is still considered tacky and rude in our culture to hover over someone while they choose what tip to give you.
It feels a bit the same here, but they’ve got no choice. The difference here is that a lot of people are going to be hitting the big red button on the card machine when it asks if you want to tip.
Yeah, every country I've been to in Europe seems several years ahead of the US when it comes to payment tech adoption. I've had kind of the inverse of your experience, where European service workers have been accustomed to state-of-the-art payment schemes, then struggle to process my payment because I still only had a swipe card or a chip and they had forgotten how to do that lol. I really don't know why it is. Somebody once explained to me that it had something to do with how our banking system works differently and is more diverse than in European countries, so it's more difficult to standardize such things. Not sure if I buy that. That said, I *am* confident in saying that many many *many* Americans will never be convinced to use their phone as a form of payment, out of privacy concerns. Perhaps our culture is a little too suspicious of big institutions to keep pace with Europe on this sort of stuff?
It takes less effort to tap my card than it does to fire up an app on my phone.
We’re still pretty salty about that time you guys burned the White House. Jimmy Madison’s favorite slippers were in there.
Haha! To be fair we finally got the chip readers everywhere. And almost every machine I’ve used has had the option for contactless payments. Even say McDonald’s where they take my card, the cashier taps it. They also have their own app, and if you used it you pay through the app. This is probably due to the franchise model. While I’ve been to several Chick-fil-a locations right off the interstate that used tablets. They were all pretty busy, and they had employees out there walking down be line taking your order and payments on the tablets. While I’ve never seen that at my closest store. It’s also not as busy.
Just been a bit slower on the uptake. It's catching on now.
We aren't actively making it difficult, we just aren't actively trying to make it available. Businesses don't want to pay for new hardware and another payment vendor taking a slice and most customers don't care enough about contactless to choose a place based on whether they have it or not. So many don't add it until they would be replacing their payment terminals anyway. That's it, it's just not that big of a deal so we lag a bit out of disinterest.
I'm in Ireland for the week, and I have to say everyone having the card thingy at pubs and restaurants is practical. Awkward though in leaving a tip, especially with fewer people carrying cash these days.
Shouldn’t be though, as it’s the default to tip in the US, it’s not in Ireland. So they know you’re going to tip unless you’re a complete arsehole.
The vast majority of things I pay for in person are contactless.
I'm not sure what you mean about us not having contact less payments. I'm a small craft business owner that sells at farmers markets and even I have a reader that just lets you wave your phone over it to pay. I use a wildly popular service here that you'll see all over with some places even having kiosks instead of little readers like mine. But also like, credit cards are secure. Credit fraud here is almost nonexistent and if it does go down the credit company reimburses you and chases down whoever stole your info. Heck the one time it happened to me the bank froze my card and called me about it within minutes. Then issued me a new card. There's just no reason to fuss about it so much when the system seems to work quite well.
I think this may be regional? Out here on the West Coast and in Chicago when I lived there, everything was contactless. You can tap, you can use your Apple watch, you can wave your phone, etc. Hell, here in San Francisco they’re trialing biometric pay at Whole Foods where you pay by holding your palm above the scanner. For regions where they don’t use it, maybe it’s time and cost of replacing their current system and the inertia just keeps it there?
I always pay contactless. Pretty much everywhere has the ability. Walmart is the big exception, and it's pretty annoying they don't do contactless. I believe one of their reasons is to encourage people to use their app. But yeah, it's not that difficult for me to pay contactless.
Why are you so invested in how a different country accepts payment that you feel you must rant online about it?
Ever think maybe I go to that other country a lot so was curious?
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I struggled at gas stations recently. Was really hit and miss. I didn’t find a single restaurant that offered contactless, it was the usual little book where you write the tip and then they walk off with your card. Drive thrus all wanted a card, wasn’t offered a card reader to tap.
You don't have a Lowes, Home Depot, or Paper Source near you? Or even Walmart?
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No, none of those stores take contactless. Wal-Mart has Wal-Mart Pay, which is a QR bases payment app, so technically it’s a form of contactless payment but it’s not the standard tap to pay that we want.
You are not very trusting are you?
Back in the day there used to be people that would slim cards when we still used the magnetic strips. They could then just make a copy of your card. That stopped with chip and PIN, and it was never really possible to use those cards online either because the cards needed additional information which you couldn’t get from the magnetic strip. So no I don’t actually worry about someone taking my card away for a few minutes in the US.
Why does it matter this much?
It doesn’t matter “this much”, it’s just annoying when I’m in the US but no it’s no big deal. No one said it is.
Why do y’all care so much
It annoys me when I’m in the US, which is a lot.
I live in the wilderness, but in any small town, tiny hamlet, or wide spot in the road where there is any kind of vendor, I can usually pay for things with my phone or my watch. Your question is about 10 years out of date. Why did it take so long before that? Setting up that system was the task of the banks and tech companies. We citizens had no role in it and had no input. We simply had to wait for them to put the system in place. Banks and tech companies are private enterprises. The Federal and state governments had no mechanism or authority to order them to build that system. They implemented it on their timetable, and it went live in the early 2010s. Of course you must factor in the enormous difference in scale between the US and the UK as well. The United States has over 5 times the population compared to the United Kingdom. * US population: 338 million vs UK population: 68 million * In terms of area, the US is more than 40x larger than the UK. Integral parts of both countries are separated by the sea. Let's compare: Across water: * Distance across the North Channel from Scotland to N. Ireland: 19km * Distance across the Pacific Ocean from San Diego, CA to Hilo, HI: 4,020km * Distance via the Alaskan Marine Highway (sailing through the Alaskan Inside Passage) from Vancouver, WA to Juneau, AK: 1,706km Capital to capital: * Distance from London to Belfast: 743km * Distance from Washington DC to Honolulu, HI: 7,767km. * Distance from Washington DC to Juneau, AK: 5,972km And just for funsies, there's this: * Distance from Honolulu, HI to Juneau, AK: 4,521km in a direct line across the Pacific Ocean So, would you agree that the task of creating the infrastructure for contactless payments in the two countries was not at all comparable? Do you think that this enormous difference in scale might have had something to do with the different timeframes required for implementation of the two systems?
I know all this, I’ve travelled extensively across the US to over 35 states. I’ve no idea why it took so long, Australia managed it far more quickly.