I was happy to see that my local grocery store, Gristedes, accepted PayPass. I have never used PayPass via my plastic credit cards. So I wasn?t sure if it even worked in this particular store. After the cashier had rung up my items, she told me that the PayPass system is finicky, and she wasn?t sure it would work. When I tried placing the Nexus S 4G on the reader, nothing happened. I held it there for a few seconds and still no payment registered. Finally, the people behind me in line were getting antsy, so I gave up.

The lesson here is that you may not want to throw away all your plastic just yet to go with a completely virtual digital wallet on your phone. Even though you may be shopping at a store that offers PayPass capability, that payment terminal may not work. If you are trying to use PayPass with a plastic credit card, and the tap-to-pay function isn?t working, you can still swipe your card. But that won?t have that option with your smartphone. So shoppers will still have to be prepared with plastic credit cards and/or cash.