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Comment by woolvalley | Hacker News Reader

In America, I don't think contactless matters that much currently.

It's really a crap shoot if any specific retailer supports contactless, no major metro system that I know of support direct debit / credit contactless cards and no major bank or credit card company issues contactless cards.

If you want to use contactless in america, you add the card to apple / google / samsung pay and use your phone for NFC payments. I get a feeling that america will do a 'leapfrog' in contactless and go directly to smartphone only contactless cards than ever issue a contactless card in the mass market.

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Cashier was shocked when I used my contactless card in middle of SF. She nearly screamed "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO???". Meanwhile even in smallest villages of Europe no one bats an eye anymore. America is bizarre!

I just flew through 4 different airports in the last week, and every single one of them, the payment device had a chip reader, but all of them were blocked with a piece of cardstock instructing the person to swipe.

Why? (I think they're all run by the same company, HMSHost, who, AFAICT as a traveler, has a monopoly on airport food.)

This is a perfect example of how bonkers/stupid banking is in the USA. If the retailer allows you to do a chip/pin transaction (much more secure than a magnetic stripe) THEY are liable for any fraud. Whereas a magnetic stripe transaction (super insecure) places all liability on the payment processor. So there is a perverse incentive to stick with old crappy technology. https://qz.com/717876/the-chip-card-transition-in-the-us-has...

And in Berlin the cashier eyed me suspiciously when I tried to use Google Pay. He was totally expecting the payment to not go through

Yeah America is fairly bizarre in what is advanced and what is from 30 years ago. But you do get things like generous rewards cards, no exchange fee international ATM & credit cards on many accounts and so on. Not to mention cheap consumer goods.

In Canada we had none of that.

It was deployed in the US 10+ years ago but few merchants upgraded to terminals that supported it so contactless died off.

In New Zealand a lot of retailers added contactless, but are now removing it again as supposedly the fees charged by Visa/Mastercard are rather high.

> no major bank or credit card company issues contactless cards

Citibank's Costco Visa card is contactless

I just got a Capital One card a month or so ago and unless I'm completely misunderstanding the graphics, it is contactless. I think they qualify as a major credit card company.

I've already switched to Apple Pay anyway.

Most Amex US cards are now issued with contactless.

Chase is about to add it to all their cards.

That must be very recent. I had contactless cards on half my cards in Canada a decade before hand in comparison.

I clearly missed the boat on that one, when did they start doing that? Mine is still swipe + chip only.

Capital One cards all seem to have it, too.

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