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Comment by acdha | Hacker News Reader

The United States is still predominantly magstripe. We’ve had chip-and-no-pin for a few years but many large retailers haven’t enabled it, possibly because transactions are so much slower (usually 30-60 seconds) and less reliable.

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> possibly because transactions are so much slower (usually 30-60 seconds)

I don't know the details of the technological differences in transaction communication between the two, but in the UK chip and pin is noticeably and consistently faster to perform transactions in my experience, often to the the point that it's perceptibly instant... although it has been quite some years since i've used magnetic ones so that's from memory.

I suppose one way to protect yourself if you are never going to use your card in the US, is by destroying the magnetic strip (magnetically).

The slow reads are entirely a technical failure by some of the large vendors. Some systems are as fast as you describe and most of the ones which I see being that slow are much faster for NFC, so I’m pretty sure it’s just that they were rushed into profuction to meet the deadline imposed by the card vendors.

Maybe it's just a difference in how relatively new the technology is to US retailers then, UK shops have had plenty of time to work out the kinks and learn what hardware to avoid.

The first generation of Chip&Pin in the UK were garbage too. Slow and often failed to read the chip, resulting in awkwardly cleaning the chip contacts.

Most of the machines were replaced inside of the first year and things have improved substantially since then.

Ahh yes I do remember a few instances of that now... I wonder what the introduction of the magnetic strip was like, looks like that technology arrived in 1969, anyone here experience that transition?

Likely, yes, although it’s somewhat surprising that a decade or so of European experience couldn’t help American companies avoid problems.

AFAIK, there's two big problems in the US:

* many places moved from offline magstripe authorisation to online chip-and-pin authorisation (while still often using card terminals that use dialup connections, and connect per transaction)

* many US banks have really slow authorisation servers (for whatever reasons!); I remember some sales staff being really surprised at my card going through in about a second (and that verification probably involved a network roundtrip to the UK!)

There's another problem -- many terminals in the US are just plain cheap-ass slow-as-hell rubbish.

"UK chip and pin is noticeably and consistently faster to perform transactions" is not because chip&pin process is faster, but because the risk of counterfeit cards is lower and the system can be configured to not verify small transactions against the bank, saving a network roundtrip - the terminal just "talks" to the chip, and does the full verification with the bank later in offline mode, without requiring the customer to wait for the outcome. Doing the same with magstripe would be much more risky.

Hmm, are you talking about the £30 limit? because other than having to manually enter a pin it doesn't seem significantly longer... no i haven't timed it, and I'm not saying that you're wrong, just that it still seems to be bellow a perceptibly significant amount of time. Or perhaps I just don't do enough shopping to have a broad enough range of samples.

I get a Monzo notification on my phone whenever I make a payment. I often feel my phone buzz before the machine has even finished and allowed me to take my card back.

I don't think the percieved speed is simply due to offline mode.

When arriving from Europe to the US it feels like going back in time. To take an example, in Poland most card transactions are contactless and I don't think there are any terminals left that do not accept contactless payments. When Apple Pay was enabled, it was instantly available everywhere (and I do mean everywhere) and nobody even calls it "apple pay", it's just known as paying with your phone, which was possible with android phones for a long time already.

Also, I don't think there are any places left where you swipe the magnetic stripe. If for some reason you don't use contactless, it's a chip transaction. I believe it's pretty much the same all across Europe?

Credit card with chips were introduced in France in 1992.

In my experience (I'm in the US) the chip cards were noticably slower when they were first introduced, but in the last year or so that seems to have been mostly resolved. Gas pumps are the one big holdout that still does mag-stripe reads. I don't think I've seen a chip read gas pump anywhere yet.

I think gas stations are the only place I still see swipe, or small merchants who have old terminals. I don’t see it as predominantly magstripe.

Everywhere I go supports magstripe. An increasing percentage support chips but I still see terminals which don’t, or more commonly, where they have a sign telling you not to use it because it’s not enabled or broken. I’m assume there have been a lot of slacker IT departments caught out by these upgrades since it’s usually big chains which have problems.

Try swiping sometime. In my experience if you have a chip card and try to swipe it, the reader will reject the swipe and tell you to insert the card instead.

And then the chip card reader part of the terminal isn't connected to the bank network yet, and you're really screwed.

Just swipe it three or five or more times, and it might work anyway.

Welcome to the 21st Century.

You can enter your card number manually.

This varies hugely by retailer, though. I'm convinced there's a level of optimization that some just aren't incentivized to do.

When I'm at O'Reilly Auto Parts, the pinpad is beeping at me to remove my card almost the moment I've inserted it. It's shockingly fast. (Then their neolithic-age printer takes 8 more seconds to generate a receipt, but... baby steps!)

I wish whoever set up their system could go show some others how it's done. Because yes, on average, most retailers have abominably slow processing for chip cards.

Yes, in Portland Oregon we have a grocery store called New Seasons that implemented a chip reader system where as soon as you walk up to the checkout you can insert your card, it tells you to remove it immediately and then the clerk continues to ring up your groceries. This might just be the way it works in other parts of the world, but in the US this particular implementation was surprisingly smooth compared to the multi step dance that other retailers require. Don’t insert card until all purchases have been rung up, ok now insert card, do not remove card, move to new screen, but still do not remove card, ok, now remove card, now sign, etc.

In the rest of the world, the customer isn’t standing around waiting for someone else to bag their groceries, so there isn’t a parallelisation possible - you stick your card in once you’ve finished bagging everything.

I loved new seasons when I visited Portland! Are they only in Oregon? It was like a more neighborhood friendly version of whole foods.

I live in the U.S. and I have exactly one store that I go to which doesn't support the chip. Small store running on a shoestring, so I'm not terribly shocked. Everywhere else I go it's chip only, if you swipe the machine will bark at you and tell you to insert the card into the chip reader instead.

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