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It's weird that we lag so far behind in some areas, even when we help develop the technology.

• peteretep 7y ago
  > It's weird that we lag so far behind in some areas Blame lobbying.
• elSidCampeador 7y ago
  According to Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga[1], they've noticed that if the transport system in an area becomes contactless enabled, then contactless adoption ramps up faster. [1] - https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2019/07/30/mastercard-inc-ma-q2-2019-earnings-call-transcript.aspx https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2019/07/30/ma... Search the page for "transport" and go to the first result.
  • rkangel 7y ago
    Anecdotally - London use of contactless certainly accelerated when the Underground started taking contactless.
  • ghaff 7y ago
    My understanding is that's how contactless (somewhat) took off in Japan. Though Japan as a whole is still even more cash-centric than Germany is. It wouldn't surprise me that the use of contactless cards at least in places like convenience stores and vending machines arose in part because credit card use isn't that widespread.
• rkangel 7y ago
  It's not the only reason but the US has a scale and population density disadvantage which makes it more expensive to roll out technology nationwide. You can see this with cellphones as well - rolling out 3G coverage across the UK is a lot cheaper 'per customer' than it is across the US, so we have better coverage.