UK not as keen on mobile wallets as mainland Europe and US

Not convenient

I use my debit card for tap and pay - far simpler that messing around, unlocking phones and scanning QR codes. Have you even been stuck behind someone in the coffee shop trying to use their phone to pay - exactly !!

Combined use?

I have stored all my loyalty cards and membership cards on my phone because I was laden down with plastic. So I unlock the phone at the till.

It would make sense to use the phone for the payment as well but not all credit card suppliers seem to have a phone app. Will investigate. As others have said, the current payment methods are reasonably quick and reasonably secure.

I use credit not debit for the slight delay in payment (from years ago when I could pay before the end of the month and settle after) and the added protection for higher value transactions.

No surprise

That Spain has the most users but it's a status thing here, stand at the till whip out a large expensive looking phablet and wave it at the machine like a magician. Most people I know hear don't know you can put AV on a phone and never look at the permissions an app is requesting before installing.

Sooner rather than later a lot of people will get burned.

Me? Cash or debit, also have velcro on the outside of my wallet, in the summer Spain is pick pocket heaven (if you're a pick pocket)

“Pop” the kettle on

Nice one. Thought this expression went out with the Ark.

Thanks, “Gran”.

Implants

I'm seriously thinking about having a contactless device implanted. However, the body part I'm considering may get me arrested.

Mobile Wallets

I don't think I've ever seen a wallet that wasn't mobile.

Isn't the whole point of a wallet that it allows you to carry around your cash and cards without losing them?

Contactless Payments in Norway

Had a surprise when I tried to make a contactless payment in Norway because you still had to enter a PIN. I don't know if it is general over there or just because of the type of card but it was confusing at first.

I just came back from a holiday in three very different parts of the USA and whilst card acceptance was pretty much universal, I didn't see anyone paying with a phone, and protocol varied quite a bit.

Some places were chip-and-pin, like we have in the UK (although they have some nice card readers that attempt to shield your keystrokes rather more effectively than UK ones), some places were chip-and-pin plus signature (what's that all about?) and some were contactless.

Most disconcerting is the fairly standard procedure in a restaurant where they take your card away and come back with a receipt for you to adjust upwards and sign. Why do they have to take your card away? Here we have portable card readers and you can see they are not skimming your card. Also, since they were expecting you to add an unknown value (tip) to the bill, they must have authorised an open or large amount, which worried me somewhat.

Still nobody using a phone for payment though, that I saw.

Maybe if some UK banks would actually wake up and smell the coffee, we could actually use their cards for our Google Wallets, instead of them living in a dream world where their own, single bank offering was actually relevant.

online wallets are useless, like paypal, you have to link your bank account, while you can pay for things just by registering your debit card, if you can pay for things with your debit card only, you should be able to add money to a wallet with a debit card, but no, you have todo a full bank transfer instead

Briefly tried Android Pay but honestly cannot see the point. Especially as it specifically won't work with a Revolut card, which by the way I can seriously recommend.

The more I hear about systems like this, the more I start to develop a twitch and think "hmm... time to start paying in cash. Nice, impossible to clone, can't be hacked, cold hard cash."

Fortunately I have a non-Internet non-contactless card from the bank. Which took a little bit of asking for, but that's what the Electron card still gives you.

Cash 22

The problem here is that after a while if you want a fully patched phone on most Android handsets you have to root the phone and install the latest version of LineageOS or equivalent.

But rooting your phone generally means that you can't use it for electronic payments because it's no longer considered trustworthy.

So you have a choice: use your credit card and, separately, an up-to-date software stack on your phone, or let an unpatched Android loose with your remaining credit balance.

Mines the one with the miniature EMP device in the pocket.

Don't know who's actually using mobile wallet in US

We're in San Francisco. A few friends and I did a qualitative survey, spending a recent month seeing if anyone was using mobile wallet to pay for anything. Not a singe person. Nada.

Having spent a few months in the UK, nothing beats tap and pay for convenience. Sadly that's not widely implemented in the US. Or if you do tap, you still have to sign. Signature - the most laughable security of all.

Unreliable Mobile Nets in the UK

Why is this a big surprise - the UK has the worst mobile networks of any EU country! No signal. No 3G signal. No 4G almost everywhere. Far less than 90% coverage by each carrier. Weak signals and continuous drop outs. Mobile wallets do not work all the time - but plastic does!

Brits arent generally very forward thinking...

Im a Brit and I hate how long it takes for things to be adopted here.

For example...

In Switzerland you can buy Bitcoin at any train station. In the UK you're lucky to find someone that knows what Bitcoin is.

In Germany there are places you can buy your groceries at using various cryptocurrencies.

In Britain we queue behind old ladies feeding coins into a self checkout they forgot to scan things into.

Britain is a nation run by old duffers catering for chavs and pensioners.

I hear the arguments about contactless etc. Yes, very good, but it never hurts to have a choice.

I can choose the car I drive, the supermarket I use and the house I want to live in. But for some reason its very hard to choose how I wish payment to be taken from me.

Contactless, mobile wallets...they're effectively the same. Just another route through the same old crappy payment processors.