Visa changes mean Americans will carry fewer physical payment cards in wallets | Hacker News Reader

Visa changes mean Americans will carry fewer physical payment cards in wallets

apnews.com

34 pointstoomuchtodo37 comments

While they might be able to worryingly consolidate down to a single physical card that can be used to skim and drain your bank account OR overdraw your checking account when a merchant takes the one card from you, they still refuse to implement chip & PIN for credit transactions in the US. How much weed did they smoke in the shower to dream this up?

Contactless skips the need for chip & pin. Combined with dynamic card numbers, this is a secure solution. Unauthorized transactions will be reversed, with escalation to government regulators if not (Regulation E).

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/regulations/100...

(work adjacent to payment rails)

Contactless suffers from the problem of barely being deployed.

Every merchant support magstripe capture, most take chip-based, but zillions of merchants in the real world™ don't support any sort of contactless at all. Furthermore, if a transaction runs as ACH in this magical consolidation shift then there is essentially no recourse for the consumer (no chargebacks); the funds are gone.

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of current state of the payment landscape in the US.

Besides Home Depot (well known contactless incapable merchant due to an unfortunate payment terminal deployment cycle) or Walmart (to push Walmart Pay in the US and Mexico, they accept contactless in 20 other countries!), contactless is fairly widespread in the US and magstripe captures when a chip is available is an automatic chargeback loss (“EMV liability shift” as of Oct 1st, 2015).

Interestingly, Wise (formerly TransferWise) is currently rotating their card numbers due to a partner change, and they’re going digital first in mobile wallets (with a replacement physical card available if you insist). Strong signal in the direction we’re headed (bridging the gap between physical cards of yesterday and digital wallets of tomorrow). Look at trajectory and velocity, not a static snapshot in time.

https://www.cnbc.com/select/mastercard-survey-contactless-pa...

https://www.mastercardservices.com/en/resources/expertise/co...

https://cb-alert.com/two-thirds-of-us-merchants-accept-conta...

https://www.mastercard.com/news/perspectives/2021/magnetic-s...

> You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of current state of the payment landscape in the US.

Maybe you should come here because you don't know what you're talking about.

There are far, far more business establishments than a few chain megacorps.

You’re talking anecdotes, I’m talking data. Working in financial services though, I am definitely interested to hear what establishments nearby you do not support contactless payments at this time.

> 31 million Americans tapped a Visa contactless card or digital wallet in March 2020, up from 25 million in November, with overall contactless usage in the U.S. growing 150% since March 2019. The U.S. now has the most contactless cards of any market globally at 175 million, with nine of the top ten U.S. issuers actively rolling out new contactless cards to customers. U.S. consumers have been quick to adopt these new cards; not only do more consumers have cards, they are using them regularly as contactless card transaction growth continues to accelerate.

From my MasterCard citation above.

You're arguing with yourself and unable to accept the viewpoint of anyone but yourself to seem "right".

Okay, take care.

I have been paying with contactless from my AppleWatch nearly everywhere I go for many years in the US.

I think my pharmacy was the last normal retailer to get it (they had been dragging their fear), and even many of the gas pumps around me got contactless 2-3 years ago.

Even many restaurants seem to support it these days.

The only time I don’t try to use it is for large purchases because I’m not sure what transaction size limits my cards have for contactless. I also don’t at fast food drive throughs because I’ve never seen a good solution at one. The poor person at the window always seems to have to hold a terminal out, possibly on some stick. And it seems like more trouble than it’s worth.

Practically every terminal that was installed to be able to support EMV many years ago had contactless support. Some places were jerks about turning it on, but it’s really really common for it to work even if they don’t have signs advertising it.

Contactless payments are chip & pin over NFC. You're making a very weird distinction here.

I didn't think so. As a user, you don't care about the underlying protocol when paying, just the UX, whether you can tap a card or your phone or if you have to stick a card in a terminal. I was attempting to communicate that contactless is as secure as chip and pin (which you help me do through your context provided, thank you!), my apologies if that did not come across as intended.

Agreed. It came across like disagreeing lacking nuance to be "right".

> The biggest change coming for Americans will be the ability for banks to issue one physical payment card that will be connected to multiple bank accounts. That means no more carrying, for example, a Bank of America or Chase debit card as well as their respective credit cards in a physical wallet. Americans will be able to set criteria with their bank — such as having all purchases below $100 or with a certain merchant applied to the debit card, while other purchases go on the credit card.

What's the startup that tried to do this but failed due to bank integration issues?

Anyway, this is HUGE news.

If I lose my Chase debit card and pin, anyone can go to an official Chase ATM and withdraw from my Savings Account! And Chase support has no way to disable this “feature”.

How do you "lose your PIN"?

Well the card had a post it attached with the PIN written on it duh…you got a better solution?

In the real world, people lend out their card in all sorts of circumstances. Unwillingness to accept that this is a practical solution in a great many circumstances and needs to be accounted for beyond “lol, don't do that” is one of the more asinine security failures of modern banking.

You’re probably thinking of Coin:

https://www.cnet.com/pictures/the-evolution-of-coin-the-all-...

Coin was cool (I had the beta and final card) but it didn’t work on every POS system (just wouldn’t read) and I didn’t love how easy it would be for a server to accidentally hit the button to switch which card you were using. Chip cards would have marked the end of Coin if they hadn’t gone under before then.

I wrote about it on my blog [0] almost 10 years ago, cool idea, failed execution.

[0] https://joshstrange.com/2015/07/22/my-experience-with-coin-a...

I already never carry my debit cards. Forgot the PIN immediately, don't have any reason to go to the ATM. No credit protection, no rewards, no extended warranties; why do other people use debit cards at all?

>why do other people use debit cards at all?

... to purchase goods and services?

You know they can be used in places other than ATMs, right?

I'm already carrying credit cards that have the benefits listed, which debit cards do not have.

Debit cards do offer all of the benefits you listed.

What debit card offers CSR/Amex level rewards?

IDK, but the claim was that debit cards offer none of those rewards, not that they offer the best possible rewards compared to credit cards.

Debit cards have very little benefit and a LOT of risk compared to credit cards.

Because of the FCBA[1], federal law protects you from most any fraud happening via credit card. It's why most credit cards advertise "free fraud coverage"; they legally are required to provide it anyway.

Debit cards on the other hand... Once your money is gone, your money is gone forever. You bank will have little interest in helping to retrieve your funds and are under no legal requirement to do so.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Credit_Billing_Act

Businesses can impose the credit card transaction fee on consumers as a surcharge, and many are starting to. Using debit rails (or hopefully soon, FedNow instant payments) avoids this fee burden.

When credit card surcharges become widespread, I'll have to consider it. But so far, I've only seen such charges at gas stations.

I've been to small indie stores and restaurants that don't take credit cards at all. Some only accept physical cash, others accept debit cards but not credit cards (because credit cards cost more for them to handle). If you just shop and eat at big chains then I suppose you wouldn't run into this problem.

Interesting. I’ve been to some restaurants that refuse to take anything but cash but I haven’t seen a business (other than dispensaries) that takes debit but not credit cards.

those small indie stores basically don’t exist anymore, if you run a cash only business 9/10 people are just turning around at the front door and going somewhere else.

Go find some authentic Chinese/Vietnamese/Indian/etc restaurants that are run by and largely attract those immigrant communities. They tend to be tiny hole-in-the-wall places in strip malls next to nail salons and the like. You'll find they tend to be cash-based even to this day. And the good ones attract plenty of people.

To get cash from an ATM whenever it's necessary and convenient? I'm confused, what's your confusion?

There's still things cash be required, or useful for.

I ask the opposite, why are people accepting credit as a normal way of life? Debt means you are a slave to the creditor. How can you walk around owing money and that's normal to you?

Surely you get that the rewards and protections are not there because creditors are generous right? At best you contribute to the social disease of perpetual credit card debt. At some point, creditors need to make profit.

I prefer debit because I am spending my money. For in person transactions, I prefer cash.

Original title "Changes from Visa mean Americans will carry fewer physical credit, debit cards in their wallets" compressed to fit title limits.

Doesn’t make much sense to me. If you are going to use a credit card for some payments, why wouldn’t you use it for all?

TL;DR: is it about some kind of a shift towards smartphone apps as a fundamental consumer payment mechanism?

I wish this piece of tech journalism was more informative; instead it feels like a lossy rendition of a corporate communique.

The stated goals are using a debit version with some merchants and credit with others, getting rid of the number+expiration+CVV scheme. Both require some kind of interactive UI and some kind of interactive communication with the payment infrastructure for authorizing payments remotely. Both requirements are met by smartphone apps, and hard to meet otherwise.

What I wonder about is - how is this going to interact with the existing Google Pay/Apple Pay ecosystems, and what are going to be the fallbacks when a phone (or whatever other tech they're using) is not available.

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