Paying for things in America is complicated

In Britain for the past few years I’ve used my phone and ApplePay pretty much everywhere, and I’ve done the same in other European countries. In most shops, cafes and pubs it’s assumed that’s how you’re going to pay. They hold out the payment device, I double click and that’s it. It’s done in a matter of seconds with barely any interaction required between buyer and seller.

Now here I am in the US and I’d assumed things would be the same but they’re not. For a start, the listed price is not the price they want you to pay. They add on tax and then they’ll often want a tip as well. Many of the places that have accepted ApplePay have struggled with it, like it’s not something they’re used to having to deal with. On a few occasions they have wanted me to unlock my phone and hand it over to them and they’ve done the payment behind the counter, often calling over a colleague to help them figure out how to deal with this awkward request. That feels a bit risky, like they could take any amount from my bank account. Even then, when it’s done, they’ve handed over a payment slip, wanting me to sign it, even though the payment’s already gone out.

In other places, when they can handle ApplePay, I’ve had to select how much I want to tip them: 20%, 22%, 24% or a custom amount or no tip, but when the server is standing there watching I’ve mostly felt compelled to give a tip. I did try “no tip” in one place and the device refused to accept it as a valid selection.

When using my debit card, rather than using contactless I’ve been asked to sign a slip of paper and write down on it how much I want to tip them. It’s a while since I’ve had to do a manual signature.

This all feels very inefficient. OK, they’re getting tips whereas in Britain and the other European countries I’ve been to in the last few years contactless payments seem to have killed off tipping. We did used to tip in restaurants when we paid in cash and in the days of old-style manual card payments, when you had to type your PIN into a device, but now most places have accepted they’re not going to get tips. Perhaps they’ve just increased their prices to cover that, and increased the wages of their servers to compensate.

From a customer’s point of view contactless payments are so much easier. When you’re in a queue it’s likely to move that much faster as people aren’t fiddling around with change or typing in PINs or signing slips of paper. I would have thought it’s more efficient for businesses as well. All that time their employees have to spend dealing with payments is time they could be doing other things.