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Comment by kleinsch | Hacker News Reader

You leave your credit card on the table at a coffee shop. A thief takes it and goes to the grocery store. You’re going to do a chargeback.

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Funny aside. Anytime my CC has been stolen the thieves always go grocery shopping first, I assume for alcohol.

It's the easiest way to test a card, before going to the Apple Store.

Yea I’m not proposing to replace low security credit cards with low security debit card this is a silly strawman.

EDIT: I see the general problem of origination fraud. But that can be mitigated by imposing limits and requiring extra levels of authentication for bigger payments.

You said you don't want the ability to do chargebacks, but chargebacks solve two different problems: 1) origination fraud (i.e. someone not you originates a transaction from your account) and 2) merchant fraud (i.e. goods not as described/unsatisfactory/undelivered).

It's fine if you say, yeah I can do without #2, but realistically you cannot do without #1 in any digital payment scheme that will have wide acceptance so a chargeback mechanism is required.

The only settlement methods we have that do without both protections are cash, cashiers checks, and wires. Setting aside cash the other two are a pain in the ass to originate exactly because they are non reversible.

1) can also be solved with limits and increasing levels of authentication.

Sure, tell me the limit that has no fraud detection, so I know how many card numbers I need to steal.

Why do you think a card number would be enough to issue a payment?

And that becomes industrial, as someone takes 50 thousand cards, and then steals $20 from each. Then the next store takes another $20...

Fraud is already a big business, with the current security levels. With worse security? Fraud goes up some more.

Why are you thinking cards?

A modern payment system would require at least touch/Face ID on every transaction.

Higher amounts would require 2FA, pre-authorization, delays, cool-downs etc.

> EDIT: I see the general problem of origination fraud. But that can be mitigated by imposing limits and requiring extra levels of authentication for bigger payments.

Which are exactly the kinds of things credit cards do, but it can't be perfect so they still suffer losses, so they still have to charge a percentage.

(Of course a lot of the percentage can go to rewards programs, so we're talking about the percentage once those are accounted for.)

In the US you can take money from a credit card by just using the that’s plainly written on it. That’s not what I would call making an effort at origination fraud prevention.

Hell, you can take money from a bank account by just using what's written on a cheque...

Believe it or not, they make a huge effort at fraud prevention. Because it takes away from their profits.

However there are both historical and convenience reasons at play here. It was a big transition to move to chips, for example.

So your assertion that they're not making an effort at fraud prevention is just completely untrue.

Nobody uses physical cards anymore... even my kids pay with their toy watch when playing restaurant

Edit: Tap pay is ubiquitous in the EU

Absolutely not true. Some places still don’t even take tap to pay and still use chip.

Yes - for example, Home Depot does not take tap payments yet.

This is something I find so fascinating about the American financial system... Home Depot in Canada has taken tap payments and Apple Pay for a long time now.

Yeah Home Depot is a bizarre exception, AFAIK they signed a contract with PayPal at some point long ago that prevents them from accepting tap-to-pay. Their checkouts have all the hardware for tap-to-pay, but contractually they can't turn it on.

Hopefully that contract ends soon, because wow did they shoot themselves in the foot on that one.

Home Depot only exists in the USA. I was talking about EU where tap is everywhere.

They're in Canada and Mexico too.

Is that in the US? Europe hasn't used the magnetic strip on cards for years. It's all chip based and those payment terminals all take NFC / Apple Pay.

It would be suicide for a shop not to take it, I know many people that don't carry their bank card at all. Only their phone for Apple pay.

Fun fact: In China, most people don't carry a wallet anymore. It's all on the phone.

You don’t have to go to China. I live and work in the UK and use Apple Pay for everything. I haven’t carried a wallet in years.

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