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Comment by harryh | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as an American, I've always found at-the-table swiping to be kind of strange, at least for higher end meals. It puts the commerce part of the evening a little too front and center for me. Or maybe I'm just not used to it.

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I'm an American who spends a decent amount of time in western Europe, to give you where I'm coming from. At high-end meals it is just like everything else with the service; if done properly, it is just as smooth and elegant as the rest of the meal. I actually prefer the single "interruption" of pay and depart (or not, considering most European dining styles involve a suitable amount of lingering even after payment) versus the request check, check delivered, payment method retrieved, ticket returned for signature series of steps, possibly including an optional return for the server to pick up the signed ticket prior to departure due to some back-of-house requirement.

I think you're simply not used to it. Meals are almost always paid at the table here in Canada. Basically, the bill comes out, server either has or will come back with the machine, enters cost, hands it to you. You tip on the machine, tap, done. For higher end stuff or groups you break the $100 tap limit, so it's insert and enter pin, but it's still quick.

The speed of it is quick, and it also gives a good chance for wrapping things up (can we get this packed, thank-yous, goodbyes if it's a bigger group, etc).

Of course, it may also help that we have chip-and-pin and tap pretty universally, so we rarely hand our card over to anyone - having the server take the card is incredibly strange for me when I'm down in the US.

As someone living in Canada, what surprised me when i went to the States for the first time was the restaurant's reluctance to split the bill individually, something we take it for granted in Canada.

You prefer strangers running away with your credit card?

I suspect a lot of comfort with what happens with credit cards in the United States comes from people believing that their card issuer will simply handle the problem if any fraudulent or merely unauthorized charges appear. There's no risk from the card going out of sight if the card is useless because the card issuer will reverse charges upon request. (Moving to chips, even with signature, is supposed to alleviate the main source of fraud here, that being cloning the card.)

That said, I'm with you; I much prefer to have my card handled just once and within sight. It is faster, safer, and, to my mind, simply more convenient.

You are probably right, but that comfort comes at a price, and the price can be seen right there in the original article: 2.6% + 10 cent credit card payment overhead.

And that is considered "cheap"! By contrast, in the European Union there's a cap of 0.3% on credit card interchange rates and 0.2% on debit. Of course that's just the raw interchange fee; a small merchant has to pay more than that to its card processor, but there are all-inclusive, Square-like offers for debit card processing fees below 1% for small merchants, and larger ones manage to keep both debit and credit processing cost way below 1%.

So the "comfort" of being able to hand over your credit card to someone who takes it out of view and possibly does unauthorized stuff with it increases prices of all the stuff you buy by roughly 2-3%.

Is this actually the case though? Even if your card is taken by the staff and you don't see being charged, you are still being charged and some entity is processing the payment. I find it hard to believe that there are no fees just because terminal is stationary.

I've handed over my card to strangers hundreds (or maybe thousands?) of times in my life and had no problems to date. So ya, not really worried about it.

To take the contrary position, my father has had his card info skimmed at restaurants at least a dozen times over the years. It's a real problem.

It's way more convenient. In the US, primarily, you either ask for the bill, you wait until they bring it, you give them your credit card, wait for them to charge it and bring back your card and the copy to sign, then you are free to leave.

In the EU, you ask for the bill, they bring you the bill and the credit card machine, and you are charged right there at the table, where you have to sign (because you have an US Credit Card after all)

Actually it's kind of funny when you visit remote places in Europe, and the proprietors are confused because this is the first time they've rang up a US Credit card, and the machine spits out a second receipt asking them to validate the signature.

It's embarrassing for Americans because they're squeamish. They have to leave a tip, and if the server is doing the payment right there, you have to actually face them when leaving your embarrassingly inadequate tip.

In the American model, payment is processed away from the customer and the bill is left for tip-adding after the server has left, to save the sensitibilities of cheap customers who tip badly.

The ideal solution here is to get rid of tipping, but I don't see that happening in my lifetime.

The ideal solution would be to tip adequately so that one doesn't have to be embarassed during payment.

The ideal solution is to build in living wages into the prices of food so tipping isn't used to subsidize restaurant owners.

Not a European expert by any means, but I've found that when you pay with CC there usually isn't a place to leave a tip. Tipping is done with spare change left on the table.

Also, I thought tipping itself isn't necessary, as many european countries have social programs to offset low wages.

Living in Germany: In most high-pricing restaurant situations I experience the person making the payment for the group would briefly before the last drinks are empty, approach the waiter/bar and make the payment away from the table. Also to avoid debates such as "let me pay, no let me pay, no you can't etc etc"

Mobile terminal doesn't prevent you from doing that. :-) That's what I do if I want to skip on the "no, lemme pay" banter. What I find curious though is that there are places in Germany where one can pay using plastic. ;-) It's always a complete PITA that most places I visit in Germany take cash exclusively.

I prefer the system in Japan—-pay at a “host station” on the way out. You can leave without needing to flag anyone down.

Not limited to Japan. Most places I've been to have you paying either before or after you eat from some form of counter. Depends what kind of place it is

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