A service in need of a verb
“I’ll just hoover the floor” as he pulled out the Dyson.
“Have you got some Sellotape?”
“Yes” she replied, handing over the Scotch tape.
There are many brands that have become generic catch all names for an entire class of products. The generic is so ingrained in our psyches that it’s difficult to imagine calling them anything else. To try and call them anything else would mark you out as a pedant. They’re a shorthand that helps makes life go along quickly.
How long does it take for a name to become a generic identifier? What happens in the meta zone when a service is crying out for a name, a visual shorthand or action to identify it by?
Contactless payment lives in this zone. It’s a service that wants to become as familiar and routine as hoovering the floor. Yet it exists without a name or visual signifier - we have nothing to call it by or action to represent it.
When I pay with cash, I can simply hand over a physical object - the notes and coins in my hand signify that I’m paying with cash. Equally, the debit or credit card held in your hand identifies that you want to use the chip and pin machine.
However, what do you do when you want to pay by contactless payment? It’s difficult to enough to type, let alone say it: “I’ll contactless pay please”. It’s a 21st Century retail tongue twister. The equivalent is imagining having to say “I’ll pay with cash” or “I’ll pay with my credit card” each time you pay - hardly a frictionless world.
You could of course use one of Visa or Mastercard’s brand names for contactless payment. “I’ll Tap and Go™” but that would mean you’ve descended to the level of Nathan Barley.
It’s also impossible to hold up your card as a visual shortcut as the action is too similar to the shorthand for using a chip and pin machine.
Introducing a new service is tough, especially one that that has the ability to become ubiquitous. However, wanting to change the way that people act in a fundamental way needs more than a logo and a marketeer’s name. It needs a way of talking about it and a visual shorthand. Until then, I’ll continue to wave my contactless card in the general direction of the ‘contactless payment machine’ and just say “I’ll erm... use the doohickey please”.
2 comments
“I’ll NFC it please”
Pronounced Nuh-Fuh-Cuh
Yes, a simple call to action is definitely a barrier here. But the problem starts before that with the whole notion of “contactless,” a term from the card industry meaning that the card need not come into physical contact with the reader. It’s a negative reflection on the magnetic stripe and little metal contacts that came before. And it’s the complete opposite of what the user needs to know because the favoured gesture is sharply contactFUL – tapping the card or NFC-enabled phone on the reader. “Near field communication” is just as bad. It raises the fear of being fleeced just for wandering too close to a shop or a tube station. When it comes to spending money I’ll wager that users prefer certain contact to indeterminate nearness. So the service is barely out of the R&D labs and already we have two competing frames for it, both of which actively undermine user confidence. If it weren’t for the blushes of a thousand teenage shop-workers, I’d suggest a verb that truly emphasises the proximity of the transaction: “I’ll pay by kissing, please.”