I have often wondered why the US has historically lagged behind for everyday banking. (e.g. email money transfers, chip enabled cards, pin number verification, tap to pay)
It's a bit of a prisoners-dilemma thing: new technology can only be adopted with sufficient coordination, but each individual party is only interested in cooperating if they think they will "win" from it more than their competitors.
The US seems to be a very bad place for consumer advocacy in general. Perhaps it's seen as "anticapitalist". I don't know if the patchwork regulatory environment of the states helps or hinders this?
In the US it's almost exclusively about beating the other guy.
I mean, in tech, look at the HTTP "referer" header, which is spelled wrong. Imagine what a hassle it would be to fix that.
If there was a Leviathan that could force every vendor and user to eliminate the old spelling or else, it could get done a lot faster.
Everyone uses NFC credit cards now (and if the amount is over ~$40 or a daily limit has been reached, with pin).
For us, chip and pin is basically deprecated, and no one has used magnetic strips in a decade.
–"The system says 'signature needed', was that intentional?"
It _is_ practical though, if you forget your pin code and need to pay something.
It used to be very common in bars/clubs too, at least before contact-free cards, to speed up the payments.
There are a handful of places in the UK that don't have PIN terminals at all and do classic swipe-and-sign transactions, though. The one I encounter most commonly is the onboard cafe car on Great Western Railway trains.
That's a valid point of view, but I actually believe that the business is taking (the bulk of) the risk. In case of a chargeback, the business has to prove that I made the purchase, and a PIN is better evidence that I actually made it compared to just a signature.
This means that businesses might accept signature only for relatively low amounts. Indeed, it's not uncommon that neither is needed for amounts under a couple of lunches or so, to make lunch queues quicker. I assume the throughput is sometimes worth the risk.
It benefits only consumers, while costing the banks and payment providers. It's the same excuses for still having critical banking infrastructure written in COBOL.
Hogwash. Yes I know all bankers live in extinct volcanoes but one thing they know a lot about is money. It is ridiculously expensive to support the US's conservatism when it comes to finance. The lack of chip and pin pales into insignificance compared to their addiction to paper checks, for example.
It would be completely in the banks' interests if everyone moved to internet banking, NFC cards etc because the running costs and fraud costs are vastly less. The problem is all those pesky, inertia-laden customers.
Paper checks are indeed a silly cost, but NFC provides banks no gain over chip. Chip provides gain over magnet stripe by basically rendering skimmers ineffective, but only basically in that credit card fraud is still a big business. Instead of skimmers, you use trojans or data leaks. Physical credit cards also sell very cheap on the black market.
In other words, NFC benefits only consumers, not banks. Chip benefits banks a little bit.
> if everyone moved to internet banking, NFC cards etc
Those are very different things. Internet banking benefits banks directly because they can shut down local branches and screw over customers (which they do here—I have to drive to a different city to insert cash, and can only do so within very limited hours).
NFC has no benefit to them (and might slightly increase fraud that the bank will have to cover by allowing ~$40 withdrawals made wirelessly from quite a far distance). Chip presents a pretty tiny benefit to them.
And most certainly, if you have a customer that already use a magnet stripe credit card, giving them an NFC card will result in instant adoption of the feature. We had some statistics when the feature rolled out—it was adopted by everyone with a supported card on the spot. It's much different when you're trying to change a check user to be a credit card user, but that might be more of an issue with the consumer experience with the bank—credit and debit cards over there sound so cumbersome compared to our system where the bank issues both credit and debit cards tied to your account. We don't have the "benefit" card mess.
It's a bit too easy to blame user inertia.
Why else would banks in europe adopt NFC or contactless payments?
Now, the national payment provider (a private company) does it because they earn money on terminals, and want to fight to stay relevant in a world of emerging mobile payment solutions such as MobilePay (a Danish mobile payment solution of which over half the population are users).
The only exception to this rule appears to be Apple Pay, which is implemented by some individual banks. I am not sure if this is due to platform differences, or whether it is just the national payment provider fighting back. I'd suspect the latter, as Apply Pay just see our dual-type credit cards as VISA, sending them transaction fees that the national payment provider lose out on.
Other than that, banks here are only differentiated based on their financial solutions, and maybe in some rare cases by their mobile/internet banking solution (all have feature complete variants, but some are nicer than others).
My point was that NFC provides no benefit over chip.
Apple pay and Samsung pay have contact free payments, and it's also more secure than signatures.
But as new payment infrastructure is expensive they will just move if they have to. Perhaps too slow, as their competitor are gnawing at their profit margins.
With a small number of banks and a stronger central government which can exert pressure you can see why the UK and EU are ahead.
When I go to the U.S. I usually have to produce ID when using my credit card. Is this because I am from out of country or do they do this with everyone paying by credit card?
I'm in my late 30s and have never once been asked to produce proof of ID in relation to a standard credit card purchase. Whether at a grocery store, restaurant, etc. I've never seen anyone else have to show ID either, maybe once in the 1980s.
I’m astonished when someone actually does check my ID.
It happens maybe once or twice a year.
It only happened once and that was many (15+) years ago, but if you ever wondered if it could happen, yeah it could. :)
I've always thought the signature was security theater, asking for a photo ID is way better from a security standpoint.
Anyone with some insight as to why want to chip in?
Unintentional pun. The US public seems to have a huge reluctance to use the chips in the cards too. It's swipe and sign.
(I'm also from Australia and signing for a credit card purchase went away decades ago. PayWave is really popular, my 89 yo mother loves it.)
If they do use the chip, then the card issuing bank is responsible for all fraudulent transactions.
This rule was supposed to go into place over a year ago. But most places couldn’t be bothered to update their equipment, so it had to be postponed.
Even now, many places still can’t be bothered. Makes me care about them just that much less.
How long ago was this? Signatures haven't been a thing here for well over a decade. Also is Paywave just contactless? Because we've also had contactless for a fair while.
There's also a separate, arguably more deserved stigma about entitled people causing trouble by using unnecessary technology.
These together, along with a reluctance to cause trouble for low-wage clerks, make people reluctant to risk holding up the line by using Apple Pay.
That means fewer people even try Apple Pay, so fewer other businesses see the need to make it available.
However 'Tap and go' is so widely adopted that I haven't carried cash in months and I know people that legitimately don't know their own PIN
In my experience Apple Pay is faster than other payment methods.
In what way do you see it as slower?
If that reliably didn’t happen, things would be fine. Unfortunately, payment processing in the US (or at least in Maryland where I live) is a mess:
- Point-of-sale devices are frequently broken, with post-it notes taped over the chip slot saying “CHIP READER DISABLED”. I’ve dealt with buggy readers that force you to swipe, then go “Oh that’s a chip card, insert it!”, then when you insert it they go “Chip not supported, reverting to swipe as a backup method”. We’re struggling enough with the basics.
- I’ve seen stores that put a “We accept ApplePay” sign in their window, but when you go in, it’s a gamble as to whether all the dependencies from the reader to the network to the payment processors are working today. When I’ve asked cashiers, their responses range from a despondent “I just don’t know anymore” to a cautious “We have it but I haven’t seen anyone use it in a while.”
- Complicating all of this is the fact that all of the POS devices in my area look identical, whether they support NFC payments or not. I have a hunch that the hardware vendor just ships NFC-capable units to everyone, but only turns them on in certain conditions (maybe related to the type of contract the merchant has?)
If anyone has plumbed the depths of this issue and can explain what’s going on, I’d appreciate it.
I've worked for a large retailer who has purchased a sizable number of verifone devices (hundreds of thousands). The devices do have NFC-enabled readers in them to support Apple Pay, however, the contract that the retailer has with Verifone specifically says that Apple Pay is disabled: The retailer does not want to pay for the development cost for enabling Apple Pay in their Point of Sales stack.
It's a great add-on for Verifone: A couple of bits get flipped in fipay and in their backend and boom: Apple Pay (as long as the payment processors support it).
I really like Android Pay/mobile payments when they work, the only problem is, I stopped really using it because the success rate is so low. The card readers seem like they aren't that strong, have difficulty sensing the phone, and when it does sense it there seems like a lot of weirdness/try agains. I tried to use it once at a vending machine and I just couldn't figure the thing out, the payment went through but when I selected something nothing happened. Credit card worked fine though.
It was so unimportant when I got a new phone I ended up getting one without NFC.
Oh, I'm pretty sure the “CHIP READER DISABLED” thing is just the merchant didn't set up their account with chip enabled, not any problem with the hardware itself.
It’s generally the fault of the POS software. In many (most?) cases, enabling EMV on the terminal requires the use of a new API. The POS software has to write code to support EMV.
I find I only use google pay when I'm not in a hurry or when I'm very familiar with the specific reader and it has a long track record of working. If I go somewhere new, I always use my card unless I have time and the store isn't busy.
About the only time I use Apple Pay is when I'm traveling to Europe because it tends to work faster than when I have to do the non-standard (for there) chip and signature.
I don't recognise this at all.
Pull phone out of pocket, touch the fingerprint reader to unlock it, wave it at the reader.
Done.
That's quicker than getting my card out of my wallet, let alone swiping and then signing something.
Theory 1: I’m not touching the reader in the right place. Maybe the sensor is on this side or that. Try hovering the phone all over the POS box.
Theory 2: Maybe my phone is not working. Try waving it around again while cashier has this “get your shit together” look on his face. Pull out CC.
Theory 3: The reader supports NFC but not ApplePay, so now I’ve wasted my time. Pull out CC.
Theory 4: Its not even a NFC reader (because there seems to be no standard way of telling by just looking at them). So, now I’ve wasted my time. Pull out CC.
At least domestically, I find credit cards almost always straightforward while Apple Pay is hit or miss having the line behind me giving me dirty looks because the entitled tech shit is holding up checkout playing with their gadget.
1) You've never unlocked your phone before? How weird.
2) How broken is your phone? Never had this issue (I use android pay multiple times per day)
3) This is unusual, to the point of not being a thing here - Applepay is compatible with contactless EMV, as is Android Pay and there's basically nothing to be done at the merchant end to support it.
4) Of course there's a way to tell, they all have the four lights at the top, either physically or on-screen, plus there's the contactless logo the display on-screen.
These imagined impediments are hilarious though, you should have a sketch show.
Most of them look like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_terminal#/media/File:P... and will occasionally have a contactless payment icon or an apple/android pay logo on the screen when you walk up to it. In the case of this card reader, the NFC point is at the bottom of the screen and you basically have to rub your phone on the screen to get it to read.
Sometimes they look like this one: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jeepersmedia/14128014654 but that big pad at the top is a lie - those have never actually worked and if there's not a sign on it, the cashier will tell you it's "broken".
The rest of them look like this: https://twitter.com/dionlisle/status/768124197549723648 and there's no clear indication or consistency where the NFC contact point is, or it is also a lie and you shouldn't even bother.
I'd say about half of my credit card transactions these days involve me handing a card to someone who swipes it directly into the register - there's no way to possibly use NFC or enter a PIN for debit/etc.
That last Ingenico is, IMHO, very poorly designed as it hides them.
In the UK (for instance) they almost all look like this one with virtual LEDs on screen -
https://metrouk2.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/ad_214433704.jp...
or this -
https://cdn.barcodesinc.com/images/models/lg/Ingenico/ipp320...
The NFC area is consistently at the top, and is consistently visible. If the standards aren't being followed in the US reader market then clearly that's not going to help anyone, but it's just more evidence that the US credit card technology market is outdated and a very weird outlier.
Just what does the CC system offer over debit?
https://due.com/blog/addressing-rising-payment-fraud-rates-u...