Allied Irish Banks (AIB) is waiving the transaction fee for all transactions made using contactless cards or NFC mobile devices. “AIB customers are using contactless for more than five million transactions a month and this is continually growing,” the bank says.
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One hopes that merchants get the message. We continue to have the chicken and egg problem. Merchants will not upgrade until there are cards, issuers will not issue cards until there are readers. This is one reason that it took a decade to introduce EMV in the US.
However, contactless is different. The cost to upgrade to contactless is much less than that to upgrade to EMV. Moreover, a few banks like AIB understand that there is s first mover advantage and are willing to invest in it. Merchants take notice.
In the end analysis consumers will opt for contactless for convenience and merchants for speed but we can all benefit from the potential reduction in fraud loss from mobile and tokenization.
Think contactless, cardless, and (credit card account) numberless. Think mobile, think tokens.