At merchants equipped with wireless payment systems, consumers wave the card to pay; purchases under $25 do not require a signature.
Apple Pay, introduced in October 2014 and only available on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus phones released last year, lets users pay by holding their phone near an NFC-equipped payment terminal and then confirm their identity with the iPhone's built-in fingerprint reader.
But by year's end, the number of locations equipped for mobile payments grew to 9,000 by incorporating all Safeway locations and Android users got a mobile payment app too.
Sulky Parisians could use drones equipped with electronic-payment systems and little wicker baskets to collect their morning croissants from the bakery.
A payment agent, equipped with a terminal, comes round to check the cards and disburse the money.
Universal Appliances (UAL), a company controlled by Johnson Ko, and the U.S.' LSI Logic have developed a set-top box equipped with an electronic payment system.
It's not clear how many merchants in Canada will be able to accept QuickPass at launch, but UnionPay says that over 70,000 merchants in the country accept UnionPay, and Canada's payment infrastructure means that a good percentage of merchants are already equipped to accept contactless payments, so the number could be a decent percentage of that 70,000.
MasterCard notes that there are already 100,000 retailers equipped to take contactless payments already in the UK.
"If you want to get a state permit from a state agency, the state agencies are not equipped to take cash payments," she said.
Google Wallet transactions work with terminals equipped with PayPass, a wireless payment technology that enables you to tap your smartphone against an electronic reader at checkout.
Connect also offers an application that lets customers reserve cars using their smartphones, and, like other car-sharing operations, its cars are equipped with an electronic toll payment tag.
