3 ms·
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 ge
by 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 agoThat'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 agoI 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.