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Comment by namdnay | Hacker News Reader

Not living in north america, there's something i must be missing - who looks at the name on a credit card? who even touches your credit card anymore? in europe and uk you're either contactless or you're given the terminal to enter your card yourself, and I'm 99% certain the "name" that is written on the card never comes up on screen

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I've been called by my name many times by store clerks after paying contactless, without having given my name, so I assume it does get surfaced to them on the billing UI. It's also fairly common (in my experience, here in southern California) for the name on the card to be automatically used as the name on your order for, e.g., calling out when it's ready to be picked up at the counter.

Interesting, is this some US thing? Because in Europe for VISA/Mastercard payments I'm quite sure the name of the card owner is never transmitted to the vendor. Not in the past, and not now. It would also be quite in conflict with data protection laws.

Also it's a risk for stolen credit card information. I think the vendor doesn't even get the credit card number when processing a payment, otherwise shop clerks could just take screenshots and abuse a credit card for online shopping.

>Interesting, is this some US thing? Because in Europe for VISA/Mastercard payments I'm quite sure the name of the card owner is never transmitted to the vendor

I was surprised too but apparently it's a field that exists on the magstripe itself. Presumably something similar exists on EMV (for chip/contactless) as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_card#Track_1

Payments with the magnetic stripe is something that’s long gone in Europe. More than 20 years. Some devices may still support it (for US tourists), but I haven’t seen anyone using it for over a decade.

I doubt that the number and the name can be read via EMC. Otherwise you could easily read strangers name in the subway by just holding your NFC Android phone close to their wallet. And HN would be full with such stories :)

I double-checked with an EMV reader app on my phone and yeah, it's not there. The fields/separators are there, but my "name" is a zero length string.

Just out of curiosity, is the card number or the expiration date there?

both

I actually have been to a gas station in france a few years ago (like in the late 2010s) whose terminal only accepted magnetic stripe. I was extremely surprised, i really thought they didn't exist anymore

Late 2010s sounds about right, the EU directive PSD2 became effective by September 2019, which banned most of those machines accepting payment without a PIN or magnetic stripe. There might have been some extended timelines in some member countries and also some providers that just didn't implement it in time (and might had to pay a fine).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive#Rev...

Ah, memories of a "cool trick" we did in the late '80s: overwrite your name on the magstripe, so when you go to an ATM with your friends, you can show them that the machine greeted you with "HELLO MASTER!". Oh, the joys of unencrypted info in pure ASCII...

There's also the weird us custom of restaurant employees just making away with your card to go pass it on the terminal. They could see your name then

American banking (including point-of-sale and credit cards) is largely a decade behind Western Europe.

But, apart from restaurants (which continue to inexplicably swipe cards out of sight), most major retailers use chip/pin or chip/signature (and the sig is only ever checked if the salesperson feels a need, which is rare).

"swiping" in context of using the magnetic strip on the card? Most European cards have this kind of payment disabled by default.

But how do you enter the PIN in those cases? We used to have the option to authorize payments with signature until a few years ago. But I think those cards completely vanished now.

At restaurants, they usually swipe and then bring you a receipt to sign. Yes, we still have the magnetic strip enabled.

Most retailers it’s tap/RFID or chip read, but I still run into old POS hardware that requires a mag swipe (not often - I think Visa charges the merchant more for these transactions).

EDIT - I much prefer chip/PIN and wish it were the default here. And wish all US cards had a PIN (some don’t, and those that support it usually need it enabled explicitly). This causes problems in Europe with unmanned terminals (gas stations after hours, train ticket self-service).

> This causes problems in Europe with unmanned terminals (gas stations after hours, train ticket self-service).

I think you should be safe with a NFC enabled card for now. Apple Pay for example works in most places in my experience (even all around the world, except US). Physical cards might have a limit for contactless payment somewhere between 20-100€. And not all devices have a pin pad to enter the required pin then.

The problem I had in the UK was unmanned gas stations (at night). My main card apparently didn’t support a PIN at the time (2018?). So filling up at night was problematic (had to use my ATM card which did have a PIN). I ran into something similar in Italy in 2017 at the Florence train station - self-service terminal wanted a PIN.

Yes, if your card doesn't have a pin, then it's probably not usable on unmanned terminals. But this is kind of by design, isn't it? Like those NFC credit card stickers, that can only be used on NFC terminals, because they aren't a smart card and don't have a magstripe.

I think the operators could still charge the card without a PIN, but the card owner could dispute the charge and just get the money back. That's why they don't accept it, they want to get paid, and not give away free gas.

The majority of EMV credit cards from American banks are chip+signature, not chip+pin.

I had issues with a chip+signature card already 10 years ago in London. Some bars just didn’t accept it. Probably because they were too lazy to archive the receipts (signing CC transactions on a screen like in the US was never a thing in Europe).

When you eat at a sit down restaurant, part of the service is not forcing you to walk to the register up front to pay. Hence you leave your card with the waiter and they disappear with it for up to 15 minutes to process the payment at the terminal.

This is also their opportunity to copy your magnetic strip and/or add a tip without your permission. (Though the latter only happened to me once, I guess the former may have happened a few times over the years it's hard to know.)

For what it’s worth, everywhere else in the world they just bring a small hand held terminal over to your table and you just insert or tap your card yourself.

In Europe they just bring the handheld payment terminal to your table...

In europe they bring the pos to your table once done with your custom. Although in the uk table service is uncommon and people queue up at the till to order. No one checks the name as it would be a waste of time anyway.

The first example given is for a liquor store - where a clerk is very likely to ask for one piece of ID, and in some locations, two - one photo ID, one with the customer's name embossed or printed on it.

I've sent my daughter in to buy stuff with my card, and I have a male first name. With contactless or chip and pin no issues at all.

In theory it doesn’t make sense.

In reality way too many people will use it as a weapon when they suspect the cardholder may be transgendered.

Source: it happened to me when I first started transitioning.

Where I’m from (Southeast Asia), mostly in malls they will ask for your government ID along with your credit card.

> who looks at the name on a credit card?

Hotels. All of them.

Car rental agencies and airlines come to mind as well. I was almost unable to purchase a ticket for my better half after we got married as we were slow to process paperwork for name changes on our credit cards. We were able to clear the matter up, with some effort, but …

really? do they still copy the details with a carbon machine? here they'll just ask you to put it in the chip&pin machine and authorise the deposit

>do they still copy the details with a carbon machine?

Lol. No.

I have more than 20 American credit cards plus a handful of debit cards. The vast majority of can't be copied with those old carbon machines - they are not embossed.

The last time I've seen anyone use those old carbon machines was to pay for parasailing in the Caribbean in 2009.

>here they'll just ask you to put it in the chip&pin machine and authorise the deposit

Same in the US except there no PIN.

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