{"id":122736,"date":"2020-11-30T02:50:17","date_gmt":"2020-11-29T23:50:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/one-touch-payments-remain-infuriatingly-absent-in-america\/"},"modified":"2020-11-30T02:50:17","modified_gmt":"2020-11-29T23:50:17","slug":"one-touch-payments-remain-infuriatingly-absent-in-america","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/one-touch-payments-remain-infuriatingly-absent-in-america\/","title":{"rendered":"#One-touch payments remain infuriatingly absent in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#One-touch payments remain infuriatingly absent in America<\/strong>”
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\n \u2019Tis the season for shopping. If you are fortunate enough to have kept your job through the pandemic-caused economic lockdowns, dropping dollars in person is good for workers and good for your streetscape. Yet America\u2019s maddening payment system still has customers jabbing grubby little fingers over and over onto grubby screens.<\/p>\n

One of the inegalitarian \u00adaspects of COVID-19 is that if you are in the work-from-home crowd, you\u2019ve got money to burn or borrow.<\/p>\n

Last Christmas, Americans owed $930 billion on credit cards. Now, they owe \u201cjust\u201d $810 billion. This debt payoff has never before happ<\/a>ened in the 45 years since people grew accustomed to carrying balances.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the result not of debt-addicted consumers growing more prudent, but of debt-addicted consumers having nothing to spend their money on, other than electronics and home improvement: no travel<\/a>, no restaurants.<\/p>\n

Provided that orangey-to-red Gotham doesn\u2019t lock down stores again \u2014 a catastrophic move based on no science<\/a> \u2014 it\u2019s time to splurge on that Roomba bot to wrap under the tree.<\/p>\n

Go into a store, pick out the higher-end Nespresso machine you covet, bring it to the counter \u2014 and here starts what should be a seamless \u201ctap and go.\u201d Instead, it starts the \u201cick\u201d process.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, you probably got a contactless \u201cchip\u201d card from your bank. If this technology<\/a> worked as advertised, you would tap the card, hear a beep, nod to the clerk and leave. That\u2019s exactly how it has worked in Europe for years (and how it works at fast-sandwich outlet Pret).<\/p>\n

In the United States, outside of Pret, you\u2019re greeted by a plethora of different, clunky \u00admachines, all requiring different information. One merchant \u00adrequires a phone number. \u00adAnother wants e-mail. One \u00admachine wants you to pick credit or debit. Another insists you OK the amount. Still others want a signature. Then, another tap, for \u201cOK.\u201d There\u2019s also the dreaded \u201cchip malfunction.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to die from a touch screen. It\u2019s the time that is the problem \u2014 time spent prolonging a close-up interaction with a stranger, time during which a line forms (and people depart from the line, meaning lost sales). Try a fail-safe way \u2014 why not use your iPhone, you Luddite? \u2014 and you end up wasting more time. This merchant doesn\u2019t take Apple Pay; didn\u2019t you know?<\/p>\n

Whose fault is this? Big Tech and big banks make great holiday villains, but this time, it\u2019s actually not their fault. You may be surprised to learn, for example, that Visa and MasterCard haven\u2019t required anyone to sign for a purchase since well before the pandemic.<\/p>\n

So why are we still signing those squiggly lines with our knuckles? It doesn\u2019t stop fraud, as the cardmakers realized long ago. Some new credit cards don\u2019t even have a signature panel on the back.<\/p>\n

Merchants, the most sympathetic party, are the culprits. Many smaller stores lease credit-card terminals from bigger networks, who have their own rules. \u00adRetailers who fear liability for fraud prefer to stay on the safe side \u2014 sticking to what they\u2019ve done for decades.<\/p>\n

But most of this has nothing to do with paying. In the perpetual war with Amazon, merchants need loyal customers, and how do you give customers points if you don\u2019t take their phone number?<\/p>\n

As is often the case, the technique retailers use to compete against a behemoth with more resources puts them at an even greater disadvantage. The one thing the customer wants \u2014 to get out, fast \u2014 is the one thing the retailer won\u2019t give you, and is still the one advantage Amazon can give you.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also just inertia: Machines need software upgrades.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s some good news<\/a>. Some merchants \u2014 ironically, the very smallest \u2014 use Venmo, which allows customers to pay touching only their own device. It also allows the seller to collect all the information it wants about you.<\/p>\n

Plus, algorithms that detect better and better where you regularly shop, and how much you spend, will help curtail fraud \u2014 more mass surveillance for your convenience.<\/p>\n

But big change won\u2019t be this Christmas. So touch, touch and touch your way through the season via \u201ccontactless\u201d payment.<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor of the Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Twitter<\/a>: @NicoleGelinas\u00a0<\/em>\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#One-touch payments remain infuriatingly absent in America” \u2019Tis the season for shopping. If you are fortunate enough to have kept your job through the pandemic-caused economic lockdowns, dropping dollars in person is good for workers and good for your streetscape. Yet America\u2019s maddening payment system still has customers jabbing grubby little fingers over and over…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":122737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/contactless-payment.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[74889,82130,1545,78807],"class_list":["post-122736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-payments","tag-11-29-20","tag-coronavirus","tag-credit-cards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}