NFC Times Exclusive: While some high-volume U.S. merchants, such as McDonald’s, Subway and Walgreens accept Apple Pay, along with other NFC-payments services, a key weakness of these platforms is the low percentage of merchants in the U.S. where consumers can tap to pay with their phones.  

Apple Pay, like such other NFC-enabled wallets as Softcard, is accepted at only about 220,000 merchant locations in the U.S., no more than 3% of total card-accepting retail stores and restaurants nationwide. Counting the millions more small mobile merchants using Square or similar acceptance devices, the penetration of contactless terminals drops even more. 

Massachusetts-based start-up LoopPay is seizing on that fact, hoping to build on the buzz created by Apple Pay while offering an alternative for consumers who have trouble finding a merchant location at which to tap their phones to pay.