content: Honestly I think you could say the same thing about light bulbs since people have been burning candles for centuries when traditional bulbs were basically better controlled fires. Some speculations I have on this: I feel like Google really broke the ice by implementing something brand new before anyone really understood how it works and whether it is worth trusting your bank information, your personal money, your business, and your clients' trust on the service. NFC was also a very new concept when it was released into the interwebs which probably had an effect on initial adoption rates. Perhaps Google Wallet hasn't been promoted much outside the initial release. I think also some people are a bit leery of Google because of its strategy to try and provide every single service it can muster. Perhaps even when Apple Pay was new, the whole mobile payment system was generally too radical of a change for the typical consumer making it seem kinda gimmicky and when the time comes that people get put into a desperate situation or get a positive incentive, they will try the new service regardless of who made it much the way credit companies like Visa popularized that system of payment back when. Edit: TL;DR - Google started and promoted a brand new type of service when NFC was also brand new. While very inspirational, it's only as good as peoples' and business' need for it. Until there's incentive, adoption is low