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While Apple Pay might not be as convenient and simple as a world that only swipes credit cards, the spread of chip readers makes Apple Pay look comparatively co

While Apple Pay might not be as convenient and simple as a world that only swipes credit cards, the spread of chip readers makes Apple Pay look comparatively convenient. First you do the dance of trying to figure out if the chip reader is actually enabled. Then for a lot of readers you have to wait a really long time with your card in the reader. And it's easy to mess up and pull out the card too early. With Apple Pay you just feel a little silly smacking your phone or watch up against a wireless reader.

jonknee 10y ago
The chip readers are such a disaster. I can't believe they are so slow.
- narrowrail 10y ago
  What's interesting is that the ISO standard for NFC is derived from ISO 7816 standard for chip cards; and, NFC has to transmit at 13.56MHz while chips have a wired connection. I'm not sure what is going on there exactly, but it doesn't make much sense (at least before diggin' deeply into the specs).
  - sitharus 10y ago
    It depends a lot on the terminal. I've been using a chip card for over 6 years now, and here in New Zealand we use cards for almost every payment. The first generation of chip terminals were horribly slow, they took far longer than a swipe. They also wore out really fast - the spring contacts would stop making proper contact with the card leading to failed transactions. The current generation (fourth I think) is much faster and more reliable. They can read the chip faster than contactless, there's still the PIN entry though. I'm not sure how it is in the US but here most retailers rent their terminals so get reasonably regular upgrades.
    - jonknee 10y ago
      That's what is surprising to me, the chips are new in the US so the terminals that support them are also all brand new. I'd say it's a good 7 seconds on average, but sometimes even longer. Apple Pay is 1 second or less most of the time (though sometimes you have to sign so that slows things down).
    - narrowrail 10y ago
      I don't know how deep this rabbit hole you want to go down, but the speed of the transaction also depends on the actual chip in the card (ASIC), and the transceiver in the terminal. These chips do have to perform a cyptographic transaction while using power from the terminal. I wonder how much filth on the card causes poor connectivity(?). The max data rate for NFC is 848kbps (IIRC); not sure about contact smartcards, but it should be faster than that.
revscat 10y ago
This is the exact reason why I switched from CVS to Walgreens. The chip readers CVS uses are cumbersome and slow, taking 30-45s to complete the transaction. Walgreens, on the other hand, takes less than 10s when I use Apple Pay.

jonknee 10y ago

The chip readers are such a disaster. I can't believe they are so slow.

narrowrail 10y ago
What's interesting is that the ISO standard for NFC is derived from ISO 7816 standard for chip cards; and, NFC has to transmit at 13.56MHz while chips have a wired connection. I'm not sure what is going on there exactly, but it doesn't make much sense (at least before diggin' deeply into the specs).
- sitharus 10y ago
  It depends a lot on the terminal. I've been using a chip card for over 6 years now, and here in New Zealand we use cards for almost every payment. The first generation of chip terminals were horribly slow, they took far longer than a swipe. They also wore out really fast - the spring contacts would stop making proper contact with the card leading to failed transactions. The current generation (fourth I think) is much faster and more reliable. They can read the chip faster than contactless, there's still the PIN entry though. I'm not sure how it is in the US but here most retailers rent their terminals so get reasonably regular upgrades.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    That's what is surprising to me, the chips are new in the US so the terminals that support them are also all brand new. I'd say it's a good 7 seconds on average, but sometimes even longer. Apple Pay is 1 second or less most of the time (though sometimes you have to sign so that slows things down).
  - narrowrail 10y ago
    I don't know how deep this rabbit hole you want to go down, but the speed of the transaction also depends on the actual chip in the card (ASIC), and the transceiver in the terminal. These chips do have to perform a cyptographic transaction while using power from the terminal. I wonder how much filth on the card causes poor connectivity(?). The max data rate for NFC is 848kbps (IIRC); not sure about contact smartcards, but it should be faster than that.

revscat 10y ago

This is the exact reason why I switched from CVS to Walgreens. The chip readers CVS uses are cumbersome and slow, taking 30-45s to complete the transaction. Walgreens, on the other hand, takes less than 10s when I use Apple Pay.