Any estimate on how [un] reliable a phone is vs a piece of plastic with a magnetic stripe?
Also - this is not clear to me - what new pieces have to rollout for this to work? New Point-of-sale machines AND new phones with NFC? COuld this interoperate with an iPAD POS app like Square?
NFC payments are not actually new in America - AmEx and Mastercard have been using it for years (that's what the little chip in AmEx Blue cards is for), so the infrastructure is largely already in place. Google's method of keeping your information in a centralized location and the idea of building it into your cellphone instead of a card is the biggest change.
The annoying thing about the chip in my AmEx is that the charge shows up as "Expresspay Blue" on my statement, instead of showing up as the merchant ("Best Buy" or what have you). This throws off my pretty charts and budgets in Mint and has resulted in me reverting to just swiping the card everywhere.
I still have a dozen or so "Expresspay Blue" charges sitting there in Mint, uncategorized, because I can't remember who I paid $12.57 to back in October (or whatever).
Minor annoyance? Absolutely. But if NFC-payment-via-phone has the same issue, you can bet money that I'll ditch it and go back to swiping my credit card.
I see a problem just with battery life. It's not unusual that I'll be out late, and my phone (Nexus One) is dead well before I've stopped paying for things with cash/CC.
In over 10 years I've only had the mag strip on one CC fail on me. Though, to be fair, my current AmEx has split in two (it's two pieces of plastic bonded together... not particularly strongly, I guess), but the card still works.
Also - this is not clear to me - what new pieces have to rollout for this to work? New Point-of-sale machines AND new phones with NFC? COuld this interoperate with an iPAD POS app like Square?