Bill Nelson walks through the parking garage to his car after a long meeting. He takes his smartphone from his pocket and searches for Chinese restaurants within 12 blocks that offer takeout. He finds three, and one of them offers a 10 percent off coupon good for the next hour. He enters the address in his GPS and drives off. Four minutes later, he pulls up to the takeout window and hands the phone to the employee so that she can quickly pass it by a scanner to register the coupon and pick up his credit card number from the radio-frequency signal emitted by the chip-embedded sticker he has attached to the phone. Then she hands him his phone and sack of food and he drives away. Nelson is riding the wave of revolutionary change in alternative commerce.

But for the Chinese restaurant, one more credit card transaction has been rung up in its five-year-old POS system,
aided by year-old readers for the coupon and chip. And the ISO that has helped the restaurant accept card payments for 12 years earns a few pennies of revenue.

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