Contactless Payment Cards Coming to a Store Near You

Filed in archive Contactless Payment Systems on April 6, 2006

Jimmy Atkinson has created a Report about contactless credit cards designed to educate consumers about the cards.

The Report is a primer of sorts on the topic of these RFID-enabled credit cards. The best part is that at the end of the Report he has links to a nice long list of media reports and other resources about contactless credit cards.

The Report contains the following kind of information:

"What gives contactless credit cards their edge is that they are faster and more secure than traditional magnetic stripe cards. In terms of speed, contactless credit cards have both cash and magnetic stripe cards beat. According to Visa, the average cash transaction takes 34 seconds and magnetic stripe credit card transactions take 24 seconds. Conversely, contactless credit card transactions take a mere 15 seconds."

I personally think RFID-enabled credit cards are going to be huge. Those extra seconds may not sound like much on an individual basis. But when you have long lines at the checkout counter, multiplied over hundreds or thousands of consumers daily, those saved seconds add up to benefit merchants.

More to the point, contactless credit cards are convenient for consumers. In the future, I foresee these payment systems will get even easier, because credit card issuers will move away from the standard credit card size/form and start issuing key fobs or smaller cards that can be carried on a key chain. In this regard, I think Mobil SpeedPass had the right idea with its inch-long key-chain based payment gizmo -- I think they were just a little ahead of the market.

Once the form of payment can be carried around on keys, and consumers take to the idea, they will never look back. It is much more convenient that having to carry magnetic stripe credit cards, which appear to be tied to the standard card size/form.


Go here to read the Contactless Credit Cards Consumer Report.