The Mobile Payment Perfect Storm

Apple Pay and chipped credit card requirements are creating the best scenario for the future of payment to finally get a foothold.

I have a new game for you when you walk to the register at your favorite store; look for this:

You should start seeing these fancy new credit card machines going into all of your favorite stores. Target, most notably, switched to new POS terminals after their very public security lapse. This machine, the VeriFone 915, has some really cool features. It can accept NFC payments (Apple Pay and Google Checkout) and even supports the new EMV standard (that little microchip you see on credit cards from other countries).

This little black box with a screen has started to represent something for me; the future of payments is here!

Years back Google and a few other companies introduced mobile payments as NFC started to become more prevalent in phones. It had a hard time getting adopted by the mainstream because it’s support was limited (7-Elevens and Macy’s) and it seemed that all was lost and we would be forced to use magnetic striped pieces of plastic for the foreseeable future. (See: Coin, a credit card-like technology which allowed you to use one card for multiple accounts, but with no EMV support, so it’ll be pretty useless when it finally ships.)

Then Apple decided to add NFC support, now all of a sudden it would appear that every retailer in the US is clamoring to support mobile payments. Well it’s actually a bit more complicated than that, it’s kind of a perfect storm of events that helped push stores to get new payment terminals. You see, while the rest of the world has had chips in their cards for a while, the US is lagging behind. That’s about to change, starting October 2015 all the major credit card vendors will be shifting liability for fraudulent purchases to the person who didn’t have EMV. Which basically means, you need a chipped card and your stores need chipped card readers.

What perfect timing, you get a more secure payment method, and support for NFC payments across the board. Now you have something interesting to bring up at the store while you are checking out. Tell them about EMV and NFC, it will distract them from the ridiculous purchases you are making.

Originally published at themartinlab.tumblr.com.