Hacker News Reader

Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

As the other replies allude to, the USA is extremely slow to adopt "new" things like chip&pin, and so in many, many places they still use swipe.

In so many ways going from Canada to the USA feels like going back in time, and swiping a credit card is always one of them.

View on HN

"As the other replies allude to, the USA is extremely slow to adopt "new" things like chip&pin, and so in many, many places they still use swipe."

Well, we're relatively slow.

That is to say, after inventing credit cards we now have a lull in innovation and feature adoption.

Most of the time, the sentiment of non-US people is "What have you done for me lately?"

I catch myself falling into that trap.

At least we use credit cards at all. I was surprised to learn recently that buying things in Japan in still a largely cash-based experience. It's lead to some weird consequences, like a ridiculously high number of vending machines per capita (1 for every 23 people).

Germany, too. I've only been to 38 countries and in very few has even magstripe transactions been common. (But that may be the fault of the countries I choose to travel in.)

But since most internet commenters never go anywhere, they buy into the "US is old and backwards and dumb" cliche that makes them feel superior to everyone else.

> But since most internet commenters never go anywhere, they buy into the "US is old and backwards and dumb" cliche that makes them feel superior to everyone else.

Because I am the OP of this comment chain, I feel that is directed at me.

For reference, this is me - http://theroadchoseme.com

I like to think I have been a few places, lived a few lives.

Yeah, germany insists on eurocard, so often transactions for folks without one, you end up having to use cash. Really weird since credit cards are accepted most places on the continent EXCEPT germany.

Most large vendors will support it now, just small retailers don't. And then they complain that big companies push them out of business..

Waiting for capitalism to reveal a profitable hole in the market is sometimes slow.

I'd blame the 5 companies that control 50% of global credit card terminals that decided to keep things low cost in the US. Much of the blame probably also rests on the 5 banks that issue the majority of the credit & debit cards in the US.

In fact I believe the current chip rules are there just to hobble new entrants in the space. Probably 10-20 startups like Square built readers that they provided for free or nearly free and gave millions of units away. Many of these are garbage as a result, and all of the mag readers will be eventually.

The chip (with conspicuously missing PIN) legislation was a pretty expensive attack on all of those companies, intentional or not.

There's probably an order of magnitude or three more readers and POS systems to switch over in the United States vs. Canada.

Considering that Canada's GDP is a rounding error compared to the United States, it's going to take a while to any payment method change to spread nationwide.

That said, I've run into far more "cash only" situations in Canada than in the U.S.

chip & pin never caught on here because the liability for identity theft/fraud is on the bank rather than the individual. so consumer's dont really care

Reply on news.ycombinator.com