US lags behind the world in tap-to-pay
The latest annual report by Visa wrote:
Contactless payments—or when a consumer taps to pay at checkout with a contactless card or mobile phone—continues to see strong adoption around the world. In 2019, excluding the United States (“U.S.”), tap to pay had surpassed 50 percent of face-to-face transactions that ran over the Visa network. This is up from less than 30 percent just two years ago. There are now more than 50 countries where tapping to pay represents at least a third of all domestic face-to-face transactions processed on our network, up from 35 countries at the end of last fiscal year.
The U.S. is starting to catch up to this global adoption rate. In 2019, U.S. financial institutions began issuing contactless cards to customers nationwide. There are now more than 100 million Visa contactless cards in the U.S., and we expect that number to grow to 300 million by the end of 2020
Contactless payments can also open up new payment experiences, such as transit. Transit continues to be an important use case for introducing consumers to the benefits of tapping to pay. In 2019, Visa helped launch contactless transit solutions in cities around the world, including Belarus, Edinburgh, Florence, Manchester, Miami, Milan, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, São Paulo and more—making it easier for people to get around while reducing operating costs for private and public transport operators.
Visa’s 2019 Annual Report
In July, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the following in its earnings call
In the United States, in addition to a successful integration into Portland’s transit system in May, we’re beginning to rollout of New York City transit and will launch in Chicago later this year. In China, Apple Pay launched the payment card for Didi the world’s largest ride hailing provider.
As I’ve said before, transit integration is a major driver of a broader digital wallet adoption, and we’re going to keep up this push to help users leave their wallet at home in more and more instances.
Source: Seeking Alpha
While iPhone and Apple devices are wildly popular in the US, a recent study reported a low adoption rate of 9% of Apple Pay among Apple-device owners. It’ll be interesting to see how transit helps with the adoption of Apple Pay and, as a result, contactless payment in the US. In Omaha, to the best of my knowledge, there is no contactless payment at Walmart. Adoption at such a chain that attracts traffic like Walmart will definitely increase the use of tap-to-pay.
US seemed to have a bigger cash transaction on credit card than the rest of the world
While studying the reports from Visa and Mastercard, I noticed something quite interesting. The US seems to withdraw more cash from credit card each time than the rest of the world. The figures from Visa and Mastercard are pretty similar, signaling a true pattern. The following data is from Visa and Mastercard in the quarter ended Jun 30, 2019.
| Cash Volume ($ billions) | Cash Transactions (millions) | Average Cash Ticket | |
| US | 14 | 15 | $933.33 |
| International | 49 | 223 | $219.73 |
| Cash Volume ($ billions) | Cash Transactions (millions) | Average Cash Ticket | |
| US | 10 | 10 | $1000.00 |
| International | 41 | 190 | $215.79 |
Minh Quang Duong 