Adopted what technology? Canada has had chip tech and tap-to-pay tech in their various debit and credit cards for a while but I've never seen tap-to-pay work with a phone here in Canada. On top of that, Google Wallet has not yet been rolled out to work in Canada or internationally for that matter, even with their physical Google Wallet cards. If you attempt to make a purchase with the physical card, it will be declined and you'll receive a notification saying that international (non-US) purchases are not supported. Apple Pay additionally does not work in Canada. Given the first point made, there's no reason for them to activate it soon anyway because our hardware won't work out of the gate regardless.
Google Wallet not working is completely on Google/the issuing bank. That is entirely a software limitation. If you try using the NFC on the phone and it tells you it's not available internationally, then there's clearly no hardware incompatibility, it's just Google not supporting international transactions.
Apple Pay not rolling out is also, similarly, because Apple is not ready to roll out in Canada, it's entirely software-based. I had my iPhone region set to Canada (I guess I never switched when I moved down) and I couldn't access the settings. Once I switched to US, bam, there it was. There have already been people who confirmed[1] that Apple Pay works perfectly fine in Canada.
NFC transactions are standardized, there is no "hardware won't work" because the entire point of the standard is that it will work. The incompatibilities are completely arbitrary, it's the respective companies not wanting to expand to Canada yet and using software to disable or limit the transactions based on transaction location.
Posted down-thread as well, but Google Wallet worked in Canada when it first launched. It wouldn't accept a Canadian address, but you could pay if you could get money onto the prepaid card. They added progressively more limitations, until eventually it started erroring at Canadian merchants. It's completely on Google, there's no technical incompatibility.
Do you have any info on the hardware incompatibility ?. I always assumed that mobile payments were meant to work with those existing NFC POS terminals.
