Office Depot Accepting Contactless Payments

The merchants were attracted to the technology because research has shown it can expedite customers through queues, potentially translating to higher sales and throughput. Just because Office Depot doesn't sell hot dogs or movie tickets to customers in a hurry, Visa points out, doesn't mean that making the payment transactions speedier and more convenient for customers isn't still a valuable proposition.

"We were [initially] focusing on places people go to on a regular basis to make small-ticket purchases," says Brian Triplett, senior vice president of emerging product development for Visa USA, "but that value proposition isn't limited to [convenience stores and quick-service restaurants]." Visa started with those markets, he explains, because it wanted to incorporate the technology into the types of merchants that consumers visit frequently—places where they could get exposure to the technology and be likely to use it to save time.

Currently, 7.3 million Visa payWave cards and 16 million MasterCard PayPass cards are in circulation worldwide. Now that issuance of RFID cards and key fobs is becoming more widespread, an increasing number of merchants are likely to begin accepting them. Triplett believes a much broader array of merchants will accept RFID payment in the future, and that it will become just another payment option. As retailers upgrade their in-store point-of-sale systems, he predicts, they'll chose payment terminals capable of reading RFID payment devices.

T.J. Sharkey, MasterCard Worldwide's senior vice president of U.S. merchant sales, explains that the company's focus is on helping merchants drive sales, regardless of merchant type. "MasterCard [PayPass]'s expansion into Office Depot does not represent a departure from our strategy, but rather an expansion of it," he says. "The benefits of PayPass—speed and convenience at the point of sale, resulting in faster throughput and happier customers—are being felt by merchants in all sectors that place a premium on such things."

According to Sharkey, research has shown that MasterCard PayPass cardholders tend to display loyalty to merchants that accept PayPass. This, he states, is another factor that will attract more merchants to begin outfitting stores to accept the payment method.