Hacker News Reader

Comment by deforciant | Hacker News Reader

when visiting Austin, US I went for a burger in Fridays near a highway and cashier was like "Oh my god, I have never seen this thing working!!!" after my contactless worked on their terminal :D Apparently it's too much magic and people just stopped trying to use chip, contactless or anything else. Just cash and swipe :)

View on HN

Had the same at a McDonald's in Boston. They even called the manager to show him what happened. Turned out that no one working there was aware that they had contactless functions, despite the advertisement at the machine.

I even get that in Belgium. And the occasional cashier that double-checks the terminal's ticket/output because they suspect the transaction is invalid because "as far as they know contactless doesn't work".

I think McDonald's was the first time I ever encountered a contactless terminal. It goes much faster than inserting the chip for some reason.

I love the system and like that it's being used extensively in some countries (e.g. UK) and becoming more prevalent in others (e.g. Germany). What's annoying are the differences in rules. In the UK it only works up to £30 (but terminals show the logo for any amount), in Spain it will work but I'll have to enter a PIN for higher amounts, other countries have completely different rules around that.

Contactless was narrowly deployed in the US 10ish years ago. It never took off as too few vendors had the terminals to support it. I only ever used mine at the local grocery store. I don't think you can get an RFID card from a US bank any more.

Capital One has started issuing contactless credit cards. They began in late June, I think. I have one.

For those of us stuck in 2007. Can you briefly describe how the contactless payment works ?

You just hold the card over the screen and it reads (I believe) an RFID chip in the card. No swiping or card insertion required.

And it's much faster most of the time.

How do you know if your card supports it? Try it and see if it works?

I had no clue until a cashier did it for me in a European country. There may be a little logo like this either on your card or on the materials when you get your card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_smart_card#/media/....

Once it was demonstrated to me, I went back and found out the cards I've had since 2013 (pre-chip).

RFID Cards or NFC from your phone. Hold your payment method near the reader and it pulls the card info wirelessly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com