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Comment by giantg2 | Hacker News Reader

The small number of places with older swipe only terminals. Or when the chip isn't working (Lowes has a stripe reader on the register if the main terminal isn't working; mainly used for gift cards though). And finally, an alert employee might not accept a damaged card.

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I've seen a few people in the US mention "when the chip isn't working". I don't think I've encountered this... ever? Of course, when the merchant's only alternative is handling cash, maybe there's more incentive to keep the card machine in order

At best I've found chip reading to work about 60% of the time across a range of local merchants here. And now the debit card I have, which is less than a year old, has a chip which has completely quit working. Making it totally useless for the (thankfully small) number of merchants whose POS systems won't let you fall back to mag-stripe when the chip fails.

As far as I'm concerned, chip cards can get stuffed. They're utter shit in my experience.

That sounds like you are somehow mistreating them, or your local merchants use "special" terminals (or maybe your bank is just using crappy materials). I can’t even remember how long ago it was that swiping worked, but chips have never broken until I cut them for the replacement card, this is over 3 different banks.

That sounds like you are somehow mistreating them,

I don't think I am. All I do is take it out of my wallet, put in the reader, take it out, put it back in my wallet, lather, rinse, repeat.

or your local merchants use "special" terminals

That would make sense if we were talking about one merchant, or even just two. But I can go to Barnes & Noble, Lowes, Food Lion, the local corner gas station, Ace Hardware, it doesn't matter, I routinely find the chip readers less reliable than the magstripe reader. I can't explain it, but chips are tainted in my worldview at this point.

> "At best I've found chip reading to work about 60% of the time ... Making it totally useless for the (thankfully small) number of merchants whose POS systems won't let you fall back to mag-stripe"

Here in the UK, many (most?) new payment terminals don't have mag-stripe readers at all. And I expect banks will start issuing new cards without a magnetic strip in the near future, if they haven't done so already.

I agree that chip & pin isn't ideal, not just because of reliability issues but also because of the security risk of PIN disclosure. But thankfully contactless (incl. Apple Pay/Android Pay) has already replaced it for 99% of daily transactions.

But if your card's chip is broken, can't you just get your bank to send out a new one?

But if your card's chip is broken, can't you just get your bank to send out a new one?

Of course I can. But that means I have to stop and take time out of my day to call my bank and dick around with them. And then if the new card comes with a new number (I don't know if it will or not), and/or expiration date (that almost certainly will change), then I have to login to EVERY SINGLE ONE of the places online where I use that card for some kind of automatic payment and change the payment details. I'm extremely loathe to do that, because it's incredibly tedious and painful, and I always miss one anyway and wind up getting scary emails about how my account is about to be closed.

Sure, my hand will probably be forced on this sooner or later. But as it stands, I just haven't cared enough to deal with all of that.

It might depend on your bank, but if you request it, it should be possible for them to issue a new card on the same account without cancelling the old card.

Your new card will have a new number and expiry date, but the old one will remain valid.

In any case, these days my web browser remembers card numbers and fills them in automatically, so it’s really not such a big deal to update card numbers online.

It might depend on your bank, but if you request it, it should be possible for them to issue a new card on the same account without cancelling the old card.

That's a good point. I guess I should call them and see if that's an option. If so, that sounds like the best of both worlds.

I could also buy a phone that has NFC / tap to pay support, and link my card to Google Wallet and use that. An awful lot of the place I shop support that these days...

I had a similar experience, but a clerk at a gas station wiped the chip edge of the card down and it worked on reinsertion. No idea how not really visible dirty (maybe from my very old wallet) was contributing to chip read failures but I have a much higher success rate after copying this fix.

When it comes to dipping the chip, it can wear down after a lot of use and stop functioning. I've never run into a problem with tapping however.

Here's an example image from a NY Times story about chips wearing down:

https://i.imgur.com/XlKEBsc.jpg

The last card I replaced due to chip wear, the chip looked even worse than that.

That is a totally acceptable amount of wear.

I have chip malfunctions at least once per month. I assume there is dirt or debris in the terminal or on the chip.

I find it odd that they're so unreliable in the US given they're neither new nor complicated technology and have a decade of use in Europe before they even started gaining adoption in the US, but I'll take your word for it. I wonder what US card or terminal manufacturers are doing wrong for such a reliability difference

Chip payments occasionally had problems in Europe too. The chips on the cards, or the contacts on the terminals would get dirty or wear out or whatever. Contactless is much more reliable.

That's wild. We've had chips on our cards in Australia for gosh-knows how long at this point, and I honestly cannot remember the last time it failed.

Not that they're even used that often these days either: everything is just tap-and-go NFC payment now.

And I do mean everything!

Remember that the US is huge, diverse, and opinionated, and really struggles to realize "My experience isn't everyone's experience"

I've had the chip struggle like once in my life. That was on a card very near it's expiration date. Most people I see in the store have no problems with their payment method, and when I was a cashier in 2012, people seemed to have significantly more problems getting their magstripes to scan.

All of this is SUPER dependent on which flavor/brand of POS is popular around you, the effort your bank put into making a good implementation, and whether your local merchants actually put effort into running their business and keeping equipment maintained. Pretty much nothing in this discussion is generalizeable to all of the US other than "We were late to the party of chip cards"

I’ve had the readers at Home Depot occasionally fail to read my chip card. The last time it happened an employee told me that the readers were designed for slightly thicker cards than some banks are using and so don’t always make contact but if you lightly press down on the exposed end after you insert it that lifts the chip end up enough to be read.

I’ve had no problems with their readers since I started doing that.

Also, when you use self check in terminals at the airport, if you use your credit card for ID, it only works via swipe.

Credit card for ID?

This explains a lot.

It’s easy so people go with it. Otherwise you have to type things.

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