Just a few day’s ago, in my previous post, I made a bold statement that “Contactless payments are not used by Dutch payers at all“. I thought I had a pretty convincing case statistically for everywhere I could pay with my new contactless card over a 4 months period I turned out the very first to use the facility.
Today in a bookstore just around the corner I was able to pay with my contactless debit card again. I directly continued my little n=1 user based survey. As it appeared the lady behind the counter told me that it was new to her (“YES AGAIN!” I thought….) and she continued “until just 10 minutes ago, but since then I was already customer number 3 to pay this way”. Arghhh..
I tried to get to grips with this experience. I must admit I was taken a bit of guard here… Not the first? And 3 in 10 minutes? While being new to the person helping me?
First of all the lady helping me just was called in to help out in the busy store. Her collogue told her (and me) that the facility was available for some time and that customers where regularly paying this way…
I turned to the owner, who I happen to know, and asked him a couple of questions on this peculiar information.
Well the POS software was enabled since January this year. Usage was picking up especially the last two months. Mostly used by young people being teenagers and young adults. They seem to find it “cool” to use it…
Could this explain my experience? That the locations I have been the first (mostly restaurants) are not frequented much by this younger age group? That my n=1 experience was heavily skewed by this age-thing? That I might be an innovator in my (middle) age group but that my age group are laggards?
I suddenly felt very very old…
NB The bookstore owner told me that he had a customer who had “copied his NFC bank card on to his android phone and paid with his phone….” weird…