Despite recent moves into mobile payment by giants such as Bank of America and Visa, US merchants may be hesitant to adopt the new technology, according to analysts at Reuters.
First, there’s the issue of cost. According to Reuters, merchants pay banks nearly $50 billion a year for processing transactions on credit or debit cards, including contactless or mobile transactions. More transactions means increased processing fees, and coupled with the cost of upgrading hardware, which normally only occurs every 5 years, merchants may be left with a bill too large to foot.