American Express is ditching the fob–the contactless slugs with a contactless chip that people could hang off their key chains to pay with. The company line is that people prefer mag stripe cards and Amex is pushing those with a chip. But the reason why people don’t like fobs–MPD found hardly anyone did in a survey of Gen X and Gen Y we did last year–is pretty easy to see: you can only use them where there are contactless point-of-sale terminals; you are more likely to be hit by lightening than to find one of these outside of Manhattan and some fast-food joints like McDonalds. At least with a contactless mag stripe card people can use the card at the vast majority of points of sale that take a swipe. So it isn’t that the fob is a bad form factor–my guess is people would be fine with it if they could actually use it. It is that contactless just hasn’t taken off and probably won’t unless something happens to ignite the adoption of this technology. The big worry for advocates of RFID contactless in my mind is whether something better will come along.