• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, April 6, 2020

It’s been taking forever to move contactless or mobile payments to mass adoption, but COVID-19 may be changing that.

Walmart recently enabled shoppers to use the Walmart Pay app at self-checkout, eliminating the need to touch a screen.

The mega-retailer also enabled remote payment using the app for pickup customers, so a consumer can stay in the car while items are loaded into the trunk by a Walmart associate.

Now Publix is rolling out contactless pay to all its stores, including GreenWise Market.

Of course, it has helped that credit card companies have enabled many of their cards to allow payment by just tapping the card.

However, with everyone armed with a smartphone, Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay can be utilized by a simple tap of the phone.

One of the toughest challenges of mobile or remote payments has been to change actual paying behaviors, which take time to form and even more time to change.

Consumers are being led to paying without touching cash or in many cases even a credit card.

The technological capability for contact-free paying has been available for some time.

Now comes the consumer behavior to tap into that technology.