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I was a user in the Mondex card trial in 1995. This was like modern chip cards, but a stored wallet instead of online auth to an account: https://en.wikipedia.
by sofaofthedamned 9y ago
I was a user in the Mondex card trial in 1995. This was like modern chip cards, but a stored wallet instead of online auth to an account:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondex
The banks outfitted buses, bars, pretty much everywhere with readers but even after inducements to use it such as half price beer(!) it still failed. Why? Because it was soooo slow. Waiting for ~45 seconds at the bar for a payment to go through got old really fast. It barely lasted a year.
I'd have thought the friction of the payment would have been a lesson learned, but here we are 22 years later and it's still a pain.
- cat199 9y agoYet now, in the card dominated era, we routinely split checks into 10 parts when dining in a group because people don't carry enough cash..
- ghaff 9y agoAlthough a lot of restaurants have notices to the effect that they'll only split bills up to 2 ways or something along those lines. I don't use cash a lot but it's still a good idea to carry some.
- jandrese 9y ago45 seconds is a ridiculous amount of time. I wouldn't use it either. It would put a big bite in a cashiers items per minute figure too, so they would hate it.
- sofaofthedamned 9y agoIt was even worse on public transport apparently. I can't even imagine being there for 45 seconds in front of a load of angry old ladies trying to get on.