Nick, I think you (and I) are "North American Joe Average".
JR, the gif of your cell is sweet!
I agree the rest of the world is so ahead of us here, as consumers, that it's plain scary.
Ditto RDIF and "contactless payments". CJ told me six months ago about paying her parking meter in Brisbane with her cell. Japan has been doing the vending machine payment through cell phones since, I dunno when.
I know when it does hit N.A. it is going to be a tsunami. The change will be very quick and it will be everywhere. It will be like Rip Van Winkle, especially for those of us over 24. We'll wake up and kids will be waving their credit cards and phones in the air and taking their MickyD meals away, and we'll be going "huh? what happened?"
... They'll be stopping at a vending machine, face it, do something with something in their hand and take out the can of soda and continue walking, and we'll be "did you see that? how did she get a soda without putting any money in the machine? did you see her put money in the machine"?
The major problem is as you said ten companies competing, no standards yet. I'm sure a lot of ushere in N.A. want badly to get into the crest of the wave and make money off of this. I sure would love to as well. The major problem is, we still don't know which wave. Which technology will be adopted, which of dozens of competing methodologies to back, how to do the integration.
Thing is, giant companies here with mega funding are having the same problem. It's not only which horse to back in the race, it's also which race are they running in and on what day at what track.