The United States has been falling behind the rest of the world, especially Asia in the area of mobile payment technology. The main reason that I believe that the United States is so behind is because every company and retailer wishes to make their own mobile payment application. While some retailers have succeeded better than others, the main issue I see is that because everyone wants their own application, it reduces the effectiveness of mobile payment applications as a whole. By having their own individual application, each retailer will always want to support their own application, however because of this, other generalized applications like Apple Pay and Android Pay are supported less and the growth of the mobile payment application is stunted. Like the saying go, “divided we fall, united we stand”. For example, in China, WeChat has a digital wallet service where uses can pay for goods and services and also sent money to other people on their contacts list. In the United States this would be a total of three or more applications instead of just one.
Reference: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/24/target-will-launch-its-own-mobile-payments-system-this-year/
The dominant mobile payment applications in China are alipay and Wechat wallet. The previous one is mainly for shopping purpose and the second one is more about transactions between people you know. There are no many choices for Chinese to decide which payment they want to use. Instead, in U.S.A, you can compare different apps and pick the one you like.