[Dave Birch] The Mu$eum of American Finance at 48 Wall Street makes for a pleasant diversion if you’re out and about in the financial district. I pottered around the various displays and wandered, drawn by an invisible force, into the “History of Money” gallery. At the very end of the gallery, in the final section dedicated to the future, was a picture of a Japanese mobile phone being used as a Suica card (Suica just announced that they now have a million users) and a Vivotech contactless POS terminal (see picture).
The label said something about contactless payments replacing money. Well, not in New York. Whereas my Barclaycard OnePulse Visa card (with PayWave) worked perfectly in Singapore, it hasn’t worked once in New York. At the Duane Reade drugstore, the attendant knew all about “Blink” cards and I happily tapped my card on the reader: nothing. My guess is that it’s an MSD-only reader, ignorant of worldwide contactless EMV standards. But I suppose it may just have been not working. That was the case at the AMC movie theatre where all of the contactless readers were turned sideways (the guy there said that they don’t work but he doesn’t know why). You can’t use contactless in the subway machines either.
I can’t pretend I’m not a little disappointed.
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