Do you leave your wallet at home, or are you more of a cash-only person?
It’s been nearly two months since the new Google Wallet launched, either replacing or living alongside Google Pay, depending on your region. The company’s latest attempt to reinvigorate its mobile payment strategy adds tickets, IDs, and more alongside the usual debit and credit cards. It’s a move that proves just how vital contactless payments are these days, with Samsung and Apple also offering their own mobile platforms.
It’s no secret that Google’s strategy can be confusing at times. The company launched the original version of Wallet way back in 2011 as a peer-to-peer payment service before joining with Android Pay in 2018. That mixture created Google Pay, a one-size-fits-all service for sending money and making payments at stores, but it didn’t take long for the company to try and reinvigorate the service. A relaunched Pay arrived in a handful of countries — India, Singapore, and the US — where it still exists today, but rather than bring it to new regions, we finally got a new Google Wallet this summer.
It might not hit the messiness levels of Google’s messaging strategies, but it’s clear that the company has yet to lock down a straightforward, easy-to-understand payment platform. And yet, contactless transactions are everywhere these days. Even in the US, which has undoubtedly lagged behind over the last decade compared to other regions, finding a store that’s branded with the contactless symbol isn’t tough.
When we last did this poll over three years ago, over half of the respondents had made the switch to using contactless payments every chance they got. At the time, I couldn’t count myself among them — it wasn’t until the pandemic really hit that I started using my phone during checkout, usually bypassing the need to interact physically with terminals altogether. These days, I use my phone to cash out every chance I get, and the few stores that don’t support contactless payments — looking at you, Home Depot — are as frustrating as ever.
So, how often are you relying on contactless payments? With this poll, we’re specifically talking phones, smartwatches, and other wearables, or any other gadget that supports mobile payment platforms. Although tap-to-pay cards are more prevalent than ever, we’re specifically not thinking of RFID. And, as usual when revisiting polls, we’ve kept the options the same as three years ago to better understand how user behavior has evolved since 2019.
