Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

Chip and PIN, at least in the US, is useless right now because virtually no merchants have the equipment. As for the browser plugin that generates a unique number for each transaction, PayPal had this in 2008 and closed it down. I'm not exactly sure why, but if they couldn't make it work, I have my doubts about newcomers being successful with it.

The one interesting thing this card can do is disable charging to the physical card number when it is seperated from the phone. Of course that will be annoying when someone wants to buy something after they have left their phone in the car or had their phone lost or stolen. It's also unclear if simply running out of battery on the phone would disable the card. If my understanding of their system is correct, it would.

I've actually noticed a lot of merchants have installed chip-and-pin compatible terminals over the last 6 months or so. (mostly at the larger retailers)

CHip and PIN will be required in the US as of Oct 2015.

Not quite. If I understand correctly, as of that date Chip and PIN will be encouraged, by charging higher fees to merchants when they fail to do a chip and PIN transaction.

No just higher fees but the merchant becomes liable for fraudulent transactions processed without chip and pin.

Whereas before the big card brands would cover more the risk and fees.

I believe it is Chip and signature that will be required, not PIN.

Canada already has chips on all our CCs - only ever place I ever need to sign a receipt is down here in the US. Chip and PIN not Chip and signature.

Parent was talking about US though, which is what I commented on. From what I have read[1], the US seems to be going mostly chip and signature for some weird reason. Anecdotally, Amex[2] only offers chip and signature cards to US customers -- no support yet for chip and pin.

[1]: http://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-USA-adopting-chip-signature-...

[2]: https://www.americanexpress.com/us/content/chip/signature.ht...

Not "required", just that after Oct 2015 the merchants will become liable for fraud (instead of the banks), if they are not equipped for Chip and PIN (apparently "pay at the pump gas stations" get an extended date of Oct 2017 instead).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV#United_States

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