CHICAGO—At least one industry observer believes increasing contactless-payment adoption could help the United States to migrate to EMV chip-and-PIN technology and eventually to widespread mobile payments.
David Birch, a director at information technology management consultancy Consult Hyperion, told attendees here during a panel discussion May 3 at the Smart Card Alliance’s annual conference that contactless-payment terminals are helping to build the infrastructure for EMV.
“If you go around and look at [some] terminals, they have EMV [acceptance]” because terminal manufacturers have deployed devices that also feature contactless readers, Birch said. EMV hardware is in the majority of point-of-sale terminals and ATMs in the U.S., he claimed.
Industry players can increase contactless use if they focus their efforts on such niche areas as unattended, low-value vending machines, concession stands at music festivals and sports stadiums, Birch said. Transit also should play a large role in contactless adoption, he added.
“Transit is a really interesting case because contactless means something different,” Birch said. “The ability to use your [contactless credit or debit card] to ride is a pretty big deal.”
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority just developed a Concept of Operations for use in establishing a contactless fare-payment system (
Based on his company’s internal consumer research, Birch believes consumers are more than willing to use and are comfortable using mobile phones to make payments. Birch referenced a pilot last year during which consumers used mobile phones to pay for transit fares in London.
About half the participants Consult Hyperion spoke with revealed a payment capability would influence which handset they would purchase. The majority of consumers would buy a handset if they could use it to pay for transit fares.
Consumers “weren’t surprised about using mobile phones this way because they thought phones would eventually do that,” Birch said. “Consumers want to do this.”
The eventual “end game” for contactless is mobile payments, Birch said. Industry players should increase contactless-acceptance points to accomplish this, he added.
Birch argued that eventually industry players should add EMV capabilities to NFC-enabled mobile phones. “EMV actually works better in phones than in cards,” Birch said.
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