Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

The idea that magstripe is so well-entrenched in U.S. retail didn’t seem possible when word of the Google and ISIS mobile wallet efforts first started leaking out in 2010. Of course NFC-equipped smartphones would have the wow factor necessary to get consumers using them at the POS. The oversold idea of consumers getting rid of their wallets always sounded like hype, but moving payment cards into phones seemed very practical.

Based on the Google Wallet results, ISIS apparently no longer believes that’s going to happen. And after a string of shifts in its business plan—it started with plans to run its own end-to-end payments network, and several shifts later now positions itself as just a “technology provider”—this time ISIS is adjusting in a way that’s clearly lined up with reality.

What Chip-and-PIN and contactless first demonstrated, Google Wallet has now proved—and ISIS is watching it rapidly approach, as well. The dirty little secret of payment cards is that there’s no demand for a change from consumers, store managers or associates, or even retail IT.

Enabling more phones with NFC won’t create that demand, despite Google’s fondest hopes (remember, most consumers now carry contactless cards they only use with the magstripe). Building a massive infrastructure to support it won’t create the demand, no matter how much ISIS wishes that were true. Even financial incentives for EMV transactions won’t move this needle, although Visa and retailers’ finance departments wish that were so.

What will do it? For a start, checkout-counter POS systems that don’t actually make a swipe easier than any other form of payment, and in-store mobile POS systems that don’t make a swipe the only option. Training for associates is probably a hopeless proposition, unless associates actually get a bonus for successfully encouraging customers to tap instead of swipe—which may not be such a crazy idea.

As for ISIS, it may now be down to three choices. It can keep working to reduce expectations for mobile payments—although once expectations get low enough, no one will use mobile at all. Or it can make sure its retailers’ POS terminals still support magstripes, but don’t effectively promote them by making them easier than anything else.

Or ISIS can forget about NFC and work with smartphone makers to add a pop-out magstripe to every phone. Yeah, that’ll work.