I think it wasn’t really consented to as much as it was built around us.

Tap to pay was created to make small transactions more palatable to the public. The big players dreamed it up financed it and put it out there. The cost to do so was likely staggering as it required a change to how all card processing machines worked.

If you wanted to do this as a grassroots movement, you’d need to provide hardware to read the cards/devices. You’re simply no way that any of the current major financial players is going to accept anyone on to their network without paying big bucks.

Samsung Galaxy watch 3 actually did something that worked somewhat amazingly that FOSS could follow, They post the NFC radio on and off to match the contents of a credit card stripe. You could actually walk up to an old machine hold your watch up for the card was swiped, and hit pay and your watch would trigger the card reader to think it read a card. I blew some poor cashiers mind at the local Ace hardware. Oh no, we don’t take tap to… BEEP, oh. I. I never seen it …