Why Paying for Stuff Is So Complicated Now | Hacker News Reader

Why Paying for Stuff Is So Complicated Now

theatlantic.com

18 pointsttepasse18 comments

This is a uniquely American problem. In Canada or Europe you just tap your phone at the terminal that is handed to you. Our use your card's chip and pin.

Or tap your card, which I find the most convenient way of paying by card.

Sometimes you hand the card to the cashier and sometimes you don't. Thats's the way it's been for decades.

The chip does add co fusion sometimes, but that's natural when transitioning to a new tech.

Here is how transactions go at a local store: I insert my chip and the machine says "please swipe." I swipe and it says "please use the chip." At which point using the chip succeeds.

As a counterpoint, I have never encountered a workflow anywhere near this bad.

All I want is for every establishment to accept Apple/Google/Samsung Pay, with an auto-emailed receipt to a Gmail folder that never hits my inbox (with an explicit, normalized, return policy on each receipt), and no paper receipt or signature ever.

No thanks. I want accountable organizations running the financial networks of major economies (Visa/MC/Disc/Amex do just fine).

To normalize return policies requires legislation (see Europe for how this is done).

Yes to emailed receipts for all transactions though. You’ll be happy to hear all payment networks in the US are deprecating signature requirements.

Oh, I still want it running through Visa et al. I just want the added security of my credit card number never being revealed (Apple Pay uses virtual numbers). The normalization of return policy I mentioned is a normalization of design and placement on the receipt, not one of actual policy.

I don’t understand this argument, because you’re never liable for fraudulent transactions.

True, but under the traditional model, I have to spend extra time going over my statements, and then there's the hassle of having a new card shipped out and having to update the number everywhere I have it saved. God help you if your credit card(s) are breached when traveling--many banks will only mail replacements to the original billing address. Exclusive use of virtual cards via Apple/Whatever Pay would mitigate this and offer general peace of mind.

Fair enough.

Current payment network operators (Visa & competitors) are still involved in Apple Pay transactions.

Why not just accept VISA/MasterCard? Why does everything have to be run by the big tech corps? VISA already has solutions for this and they have been out the last, what two decades. It can’t be the tech that’s lacking in USA, it has to be a pollicy or market issue.

Complicated even more by shopper loyalty programs.

Following Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, now checking out involves an extra step: the cashier asks every patron "Are you a Prime member?"

Then a number of things can happen. Worst case scenario: they are a Prime member but haven't installed the Whole Foods app on their phone. Then they are encouraged to find and download the app, install it, open it, find their login info and enter it, then bring up their unique barcode on their phone for the cashier to scan. In high-volume stores this adds ages to wait time.

Another retailer near me (Uniqlo) also has an app-based loyalty program and I've experienced the same delays there.

Back when I was a cashier we all passively resisted asking if they had the store credit card for exactly this reason. Corporate never could get the compliance rates up.

Great article that does a good job of recapping the evolution of how the interaction between consumer and merchant has evolved

I disagree with the conclusion though. In US it’s still kind of behind but in several European countries (Iceland, Norway and Sweden come to mind, Iceland the most so) its way easier to pay. NFC payment means that I am done paying for my groceries within 5 seconds of when the cashier swipes the last item. I can’t think of a single place I went to in Iceland that didn’t have NFC payment.

They forgot to mention bitcoin...because it bitcoins!

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