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Comment by rjsw | Hacker News Reader

I have just read a report of a trip to the US by someone from the UK. He was surprised how long it took to process a chip and pin transaction in the US, you don't notice any delay in machines in the UK.

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NPRs Planet Money did a total fluff piece[0] where they talked about how slow chip cards were, and why they couldn't be adopted in the US because of the speed.

In Europe, even when being abroad (if that makes a difference), I have never had any issues with delays or payments, it only takes 1-2 seconds.

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/04/13/474135422/episo...

Could you provide more details about the UX when using chip & pin in the US? What is this "delay"?

Chip & PIN is quite prevalent up here in west coast Canada. Just wondering how our experience differs from yours.

Stick your card in the reader, wait tens of seconds until it tells you that you can remove it.

Compared to something like ApplePay where you tap and it's processed in a few seconds or old swipe where it's even faster.

Odd. We just got chipcards here in chicago and its consistently close to 30 seconds too, but not because of processing time—that usually takes three/four seconds, but for some reason we also have to tap through several screens on every transaction asking if you want cash back…if you approve the amount…if you want it all on this card…poorly labelled with "yes"/"no" buttons. Maddening.

Not sure about Chicago but in the Bay Area, you only get the cash back prompts when using a debit card, which also sets you up for additional fraud liability and lower rewards kickbacks. I'd suggest getting a chase sapphire or citi DoubleCash card. It'll be faster as well (no idiotic cash back prompts with every transaction).

This is inane advice. I'm aware of credit cards, thanks.

Tens of seconds is an exaggeration. In my experience it's max 10 seconds.

And that's assuming Apple Pay is recognizing your fingerprint or is coming up at all. Don't get me started if you have multiple cards linked to Apple Pay...

I'll tell you that Apple Pay is significantly better if you have the watch. Since the watch is already authenticated to your phone, there's no fingerprint mess. You just double tap the side button and hold the watch over the payment terminal, it taps you, and you're done. It's extremely convenient.

For extra oddness, Apple Pay is extremely fast everywhere I've used it except my grocery store. There it takes about 30 seconds. I have no idea why. The device tells me I'm done, but for whatever reason the software on the point-of-sale system doesn't decide that the transaction has been paid for for a surprisingly long amount of time.

I've timed it at the WF next door and it is ~13s. Not "tens", but significantly more than your "max" of 10.

In my experiences it's between 10 and 20 seconds. The places that haven't yet updated their terminals and still swipe cards are much faster.

That could be a communication problem between card terminal and network, not representing the average case.

It is not just the average case, it's the rule in the US. The same terminal will be fast for swipe and NFC transactions while being terribly slow for EMV.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned caching. The terminals are likely slow either way, but they can cache the swipe and appear faster.

This is not possible via the chip which requires synchronous communication with the terminal.

I half-remember an article I read a long time ago about chip and pin cards that mentioned asynchronous communication with the mothership as a big win for the chip.

The example it brought up was that because the chip's identity could be verified through local communication with the chip, purchases could be logged at the terminal and synchronized at any point with the payment processor.

Is there something about the US payment processing market that makes that feature unattractive? Are businesses subsidizing more fraud protection than in other countries by making transactions synchronous and hiring more staff?

What do you mean cache the swipe? You can swipe and have a receipt in your hand before the chip cards tell you to remove your card. They are simply way slower. NFC is similarly speedy in comparison to the chips.

You wouldn't happen to have a link to that, would you?

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