It will replace debit cards and probably have a gateway at POS to existing bank networks. Not sure how quickly that will roll out, hopefully will not require brand new terminals across the country.
It will replace the use case of using credit cards to pay immediately, but not the carrying of high interest debt case.
We just got tap and pay terminals to be ubiquitously deployed (and are still a major pain). It took a global pandemic - any point of sale rollout would be decades long.
That just reminded me about how my CC's tap to pay spend limit was like $40 per transaction before the pandemic. That was a huge waste of a feature until the limits were raised.
Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, Fred Meyer (Kroger), and Winco (also grocery store) still do not have tap to pay, even though their terminals are capable and have the tap to pay symbol. Infuriating. Every other place I have been to has tap to pay.
That's crazy. I don't think teenagers in the UK ever carry physical credit cards on them. They just wave their phone at stuff. Even the people I buy pizza from, who are literally in a van, in a car park (it's the best pizza in the city, what can I say, the man may not want to run a proper sit-down restaurant but he does know how to cook a really good pizza) have tap to pay. The buses, the corner stores, everything has it.
The smaller places all have tap to pay in my experience. It is the large businesses, which I listed, that do not seem to have incentive to update their systems to allow tap to pay.
It will replace the use case of using credit cards to pay immediately, but not the carrying of high interest debt case.