Phone payments still need work

Apple Pay, Google Pay and similar apps on the Apple Watch and competing smartwatches use NFC, short for “near field communication.” (Samsung Pay also employs NFC but adds a separate system to emulate a credit card’s magnetic stripe.) This wireless technology works at least as fast as swiping a card and does so far more securely. But most phone users ignore it, even after all the buzz over Apple Pay since its 2014 launch. “Twenty-nine percent of iPhone users reported using Apple Pay ‘recently’ (i.e. within three months) at the point of sale,” e-mailed James Wester, research director for global payments at the market-intelligence firm IDC. “But 19 percent reported their last use of NFC was more than three months ago, and 52 percent said they have never used it.”