This has been a common scenario for many countries and cities around the world, for a long time, before the MTA introduced it, with similar flawless execution. Just off the top of my head, London, Singapore, Sydney, Japan and South Korea.
I remember when Americans were initially hostile to NFC payments almost a decade ago, but I guess times change?
The new wave seems mostly driven by Stripe and Square being adopted by small businesses everywhere and supporting it out of the box, forcing the major retailers to finally catch up.
> Just off the top of my head, London
Transport of London used (and still does) Oyster Cards (contactless smart cards). when they switched the system to also support contactless credit cards all they had to do was flip a switch, the support was already baked in.
contactless credit card support on TfL started in 2012 and the full rollout was in 2014.
By using a watch or a card? A watch is 10x better than a card because it's always available, even when your hands are full.
iOS devices also have Power Reserve, which lets you use wallet and express transit for up to 5 hours even after your battery is out of juice.
https://www.idownloadblog.com/2022/01/13/apple-power-reserve...
How do these 2 not conflict?
The Watch isn’t like a phone. It doesn’t have a lot of background apps running and the battery life between charge intervals is more than enough.
What happens if your phone runs out of battery? Take out your tablet.
Note that I have no problem with others liking the watch. I just don't see what makes it so much more convenient than a phone. Curious what will pull me over.
On the London Underground since 2014 you can use any regular EMV NFC debit/credit card to tap in and out of turnstiles. Since Apple Pay just implements the EMV standard, it works just fine as well with any credit card you have added in there.
You can buy NFC rings these days
The awfulness of chip payments makes Apple Pay possible.
Americans always seem to come up with an excuse for why they are slower, like a comment higher in this thread, despite the rest of the world moving on with more convenient and accessible technologies. Is it an overly defensive culture?
Every country is unique, but the financial system in the US is, as far as I can tell, quite unique, in large part due to how large the country is both in physical size and population, combined with a governing system that decentralizes a lot of power (which means some changes are much harder to mandate vs what China can decide to do, for example). You have to understand some of these foundational differences, after which it makes much more sense why some things move much more slowly in the US.
Smaller banks and credit unions have zero incentive not to participate in anything the big banks do since it will immediately put them behind 99% of Canadians.
yes, in canada the process to transfer money to somebody is to go to the "e-transfer" section in your bank's app or website, enter the email address to send to and an amount, and hit send. you don't need to know account numbers or anything like that.
in the US, credit card companies continued to accept liability for magstripe transactions up until a couple years ago. i think it was an attempt to hold onto their absurdly high market share in the US - most other countries have higher debit card usage.
I’m curious what you mean by “worked better”? I haven’t used magstripe for a decade at least but can’t say I’m nostalgic for the experience.