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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

Having worked with some of CFA's competition and comparing their IoT architectures, I'd say these guys have their heads on straight. Kudos to them.

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I've never been to a retail establishment with anything close to the credit card speed of CFA. The cashier can swipe and grab receipt in one smooth and quick motion. It's so fast you feel like it's broken or slight of hand.

I wonder how they do it or why other companies can't or don't do it. CFA stores are so much busier than even an average McDonald's, maybe the efficiency gains are just worth more.

No idea how they handled the chip card shift.

From what I understand, merchants can do a quicker swipe (basically record the card # and transaction amount without waiting for authorization), but the merchant fees are slightly higher because of the possible higher fraud/chargeback rate. It's up to the chain to decide on what to do.

Perhaps CFA can do it even better since they could possibly keep a database of bad cards at the edge. Remember those books that cashiers used to thumb through to verify if a card was stolen?

Or keep a Bloom filter of hashes of repeat customers’ cards on the edge to accelerate their experiences.

The goal is to detect stolen/deactivated cards. Not sure how that helps.

If it's a repeat customer, at the same location, then you can avoid contacting the payment processor gateway, and just record the transaction on the local cluster for later payment processing. The expected value of the loss if someone stole their card, and used it at the same restaurant that they frequent as a regular, after the card was canceled, and the restaurant gave the thief a chicken sandwich, and now corporate needs to eat that cost because the asynchronous CC transaction doesn't go through when they finally run it... is absolutely miniscule.

The one place where CFA IT seems to fall down is at the drive-through.

I used to be able to pay for my order with the order taker on his/her iPad using my Apple Watch.

For the last six months or so, I have to go all the way to the pick-up window, and they have to get a manager to unplug a card swipe terminal from the front counter, plug it in near the window, log in to the terminal, and then hang the actual terminal out of the window so I can tap my watch.

Very strange. Hopefully it's only a problem at the one CFA in my geographic area.

I'd send that feedback through our feedback form... our product teams definitely need to hear that; https://www.chick-fil-a.com/Customer-Service/Contact

Costco is the fastest I've come across. Haven't tried CFA as I usually do drive-thru.

Most places have convoluted the whole card process. It's slower than cash now...

Same. Costco's card readers are super fast. They also just started accepting tap to pay (Apple pay) nationwide.

Petsmart was like the before the chip change over. It would typically take a few hundred MS to get approval and print the receipt.

I have noticed that some chipotle cashiers print the receipt before the card goes through, the CFA cashiers could be doing something similar.

To add another data point, the quick-accept only happens under a certain amount, like $25. Anything above that might trigger a signature.

No major issue requires a signature since April. Some places still ask for one because there was no real need to update software over it.

Thanks! We appreciate the compliment! :)

Sounds like it would be fun to be on your team, but my work lies on the other end of the equipment chain. I do OEM work for the fryers and grills, and boy could they use a kick in the pants from the chains to get their act together.

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