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It seems to me that these alternatives (Chip & sign, chip and pin, carrying a credit card at all) all compete poorly with the "tap my phone to pay" offerings. I
by kylecordes 10y ago
It seems to me that these alternatives (Chip & sign, chip and pin, carrying a credit card at all) all compete poorly with the "tap my phone to pay" offerings. I use the latter whenever and wherever it is offered. As I understand it offers greater security than any of the above, and more importantly (life is short) it is much faster. (Though there is one wrinkle. Most point-of-sale systems process phone payments with just the tap. A few of them seem to instead treat it as equivalent to a swipe, and then launch you into a legacy multistep handshake thereafter.)
For reasons I don't understand, the credit card makers have spent many years bringing the new chip cards to market, they include much higher technology than ever offered before, yet the payment process takes much longer. Of course these few seconds don't matter that much per transaction, but think it might be enough to actually make a meaningful difference in staffing levels and line lengths at big stores in December.
I do understand the fees though. The credit card brands and banks have worked themselves, through years of diligent effort, into a business where they can impose a kind of "tax" of 3% on most of the retail economy across the entire US. This is obviously of immense economic value to them, and they will work very hard at every level to maintain it for as long as possible. On the other hand, paying these companies a 3% tax on every retail transaction is... rather surprising in the grand scheme of things, and seems unlikely to persist for that much longer.
- dec0dedab0de 10y agoIt seems to me that these alternatives (Chip & sign, chip and pin, carrying a credit card at all) all compete poorly with the "tap my phone to pay" offerings. Cards are waterproof, and don't require being charged.
- nacs 10y agoHow is this an issue? Most people don't have issues keeping their phone's out of water or keeping it charged.
- BinaryIdiot 10y agoParent was referring to cards not phones.
- tropo 10y agoOK, but if that fails and your phone gets wet... how will you pay for the new phone? With a soggy broken phone?
- Grishnakh 10y agoThat's why you buy a waterproof phone.
- dec0dedab0de 10y agoWell it would probably push me back to cash. I don't bring my phone if I'm going to be wet, or theres a chance of it getting damaged (swimming, moshpits) but I still might want or need to buy something. I also find it a chore to keep my phone charged all day, and will regularly have it die, and leave it somewhere to be charged while I go out.
- djsumdog 10y agoCredit cards don't run out of battery. If your phone is almost out of juice, you can order an Uber. But if your battery is flat, you can always ask the cabby if they take cards (or just withdraw cash using your card if you're in a city where most of the cabs don't).
- firebird84 10y agoExcept in my experience cabbies are like "yeah we take credit" and then afterwards "oh my credit card machine is broken, are you sure you don't have cash? I'll drive you to the ATM..." Cabbies want to dodge that income tax.
- thedufer 10y agoThis probably varies by location, but in nyc cabs are required to have working credit card readers. Thus, insisting on credit card pretty much always works - the alternative is that they admit they illegally picked you up.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- donatj 10y agoI don't enjoy carrying a fragile $500+ computer on my person at all time and often do without. I frankly don't want to live in a world where I couldn't leave it at home.
- freehunter 10y agoAnd plenty of people feel the same way about cards. That's why Apple Pay falls back to plastic cards, and plastic cards fall back to cash.
- nostrebored 10y agoIf I break my credit card (which is actually quite hard) I get a replacement. If I break my phone I better hope that I had a warranty.
- bogomipz 10y agoAs a credit card holder they still send you a physical card, I don't think than anyone is waving that if you say you have an Iphone. If you lose your phone you just fall back to the physical card that you presumably have in your wallet somewhere.
- facetube 10y agoWhy not just use the card all the time then?
- colejohnson66 10y agoBecause the phone is more secure using one time tokens instead of a semi permanent 16 digit number
- facetube 10y agoI was assuming a chip and pin style card. These, as best as I can tell, seem to have most of the security of a phone-based solution, but with a much smaller attack surface (no internet connection, no cellular radio or baseband processor) and no need for recharging or carrying backup payment methods.
- lostlogin 10y agoDon't forget dropping, temperature sensitivity, bending and (for me) magnetic field sensitivity (which seems to be alarmingly bad but temporary). It only takes one event to cost you close to $1000 (not sure of phone cost in US). That's a lot more than a new credit card costs.
- snewk 10y agoarent plastic cards arguably more vulnerable to magnetic fields?
- lostlogin 10y agoNo. Magnetic strips are resistant to 3 tesla, but it does kill them. I assume moving fast across flux lines does it. However chips on the card are good with unlimited exposure to 4.7 tesla as far as I can tell. Phones turn off and won't reboot for a period of time that is alarming, but so far I haven't seen it kill one. MRI engineers even have instructions to document some scanner work with their iPhones. It may just be the screen turning off so I'll have to test Siri or something to check if it's that. They always work again so far but the 30 minute wait didn't seem good!
- tjohns 10y agoMany phones have magnetic switches for use with smart cases. When you close the case cover, a small magnet trips the switch and turns the screen off. The magnet isn't damaging the phone — at least not at field strengths likely to be encountered in everyday life. Removing the magnetic field should immediately turn the screen back on.
- lostlogin 10y ago4.7t is pretty strong. It isn't a cover detector as it's mainly iPhones I've seen affected and it lasts long after the phone is removed from the field. However this may be what has caused the effect on some of the other phones I've seen exposed. I'll do some experimenting next time it occurs. GE and Seimens seem to have an array of phones that engineers are equipped with and they are happy to expose them to high fields.
- profeta 10y ago...until they do.
- Spooks 10y agoWe obviously don't hang around the same people/age group. There is always at least one person in my circle of friends that needs a charger. Obviously 90% of the time a phone could be used (though I don't agree it's faster than credit card tap, roughly the same speed) and a card can be used as backup, but it makes ditching a credit card completely not really an option.
- dghughes 10y agoI foresee an opportunity in the electric vehicle industry a giant quick charge truck for stranded or absentminded EV drivers.
- chillax 10y agohttp://www.plugincars.com/aaa-introduces-roadside-emergency-charging-electric-cars-107663.html http://www.plugincars.com/aaa-introduces-roadside-emergency-...
- dghughes 10y agoDang it! I'm ahead of my time but five years late.
- janekm 10y agoActually that would be really cool with self-driving cars, have a "tanker car" pull up next to you to extend the range for long-range "sorties"...
- andrewflnr 10y agoWhile you're driving, mid-air refueling style. Better make the link-up all in the same lane, though.
- cryptoz 10y agoAutonomous cars will already line up together to get the slipstream efficiency; take it an extra step further and you could have a battery tanker-truck up front giving everyone in the convoy a charge and also making their travel more efficient.
- ptaipale 10y agoMany people do. It's not once or twice that I've ran out of battery. Once I even purchased a backup power bank to charge my phone. I paid with a bank card.
- duncan_bayne 10y agoI have one of those octopus-like "charge any phone" chargers in my kitchen for friends and family who are perennially in need of a charge.
- marcoperaza 10y agoHow is it not an issue? My ability to pay should not rely on my phone's OS and payment app functioning correctly. It should not rely on me having remembered to charge my phone. All of these phone payment systems go through the credit card companies anyway. Printing out the plastic card is not the main service they provide.
- exabrial 10y agoMy phone is waterproof
- prodmerc 10y agoThere's also the small issue of millions of people using feature phones for work (sturdier and no need to risk a $200+ smartphone being broken) and carrying a simple card for payments. But who cares about those chumps...
- Grishnakh 10y agoAnd somehow that physically prevents you from also carrying your personal phone when you're out and about?
- bentpins 10y agoI'm not sure how it works but it works but with Semble in NZ they seem to be able to do it with the phone off http://www.semble.co.nz/faqs/always-on http://www.semble.co.nz/faqs/always-on
- mmcconnell1618 10y agoWhile I think the credit card companies in general are running something similar to a mafia protection racket, they are in fact providing value to retailers. By extending credit to consumers they encourage consumers to purchase more from retailers. The question for retailers is: "Does the 2.x% transaction fee cost more than the incremental revenue from customers buying on credit?"
- mseebach 10y agoThat's a pretty limited view of the credit card value proposition. The credit part is, of course, what it is, but also important is the fact that most people have immediate and secure to all their cash (and credit). Also, not to be discounted is that it's far from free to handle cash. The delay in settling credit card payments + apparently pretty heavy-handed practises around charge backs is probably a bigger problem than ~2% transaction fees are.
- mmcconnell1618 10y agoAgreed. I was just trying to point out that the % transaction fee is not just for the currency exchange, but also for the risk involved in providing a line of credit.
- montecarl 10y agoVISA does not offer credit. The issuing bank does. VISA is just a payment network that links consumers, merchants, and credit issuers. Actually it is a scheme that involves 4 parties[1]. [1] https://gendal.me/2014/08/09/a-simple-explanation-of-fees-in-the-payment-card-industry/ https://gendal.me/2014/08/09/a-simple-explanation-of-fees-in...
- thehashrocket 10y agoi would go so far as 80% of the places I go don't accept chip and anything. they all have little stickers on them saying "chip doesn't work, please swipe" or the equivalent. i'm pretty sure they don't even have a plan for implementing it.
- sdenton4 10y agoMany of the chip enabled machines in the US I've seen are really slow; there local market has huge lines just after launch because the process was so much slower than the swipe. The funny part is that this all works quite well in Canada. The chip and pin systems there are quick and completely painless. Send like the card companies in the US drug their feet for years, and then picked up some substandard contractors for implementations...
- wvenable 10y agoIt's been years of improvement in Canada and we started much earlier. Chip and PIN used to be noticeably slower (but I wouldn't call it slow) but now it's very fast. Tap is instantaneous.
- jedberg 10y agoWait until October. That's why liability flips from CC company to merchant for any non-chip transaction.
- hundchenkatze 10y agoMost CC companies made the liability flip for POS terminals in October 2015, some even sooner. They all seem to have held off until October 2017 for gas pumps though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMV#United_States
- seanp2k2 10y agoGas stations, ahhhh. Gas pump UI and UX was terrible in the 90s and is a joke by modern standards. It makes me almost want to drive off when they make me decline to play the lotto and decline a car wash at the pump.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago> It seems to me that these alternatives (Chip & sign, chip and pin, carrying a credit card at all) all compete poorly with the "tap my phone to pay" offerings. Apple takes a cut for "tap to pay". No one wants to pay extra middlemen. > For reasons I don't understand, the credit card makers have spent many years bringing the new chip cards to market, they include much higher technology than ever offered before, yet the payment process takes much longer. It took years to roll out chip and pin because no one wanted to pay for the new terminals (another expensive cost pushed on to someone). It takes longer to approve a transaction because of the challenge response implemented to reduce fraud. > I do understand the fees though. The credit card brands and banks have worked themselves, through years of diligent effort, into a business where they can impose a kind of "tax" of 3% on most of the retail economy across the entire US. This is being driven down by legislation. Everything has a cost, and someone has to pay it.
- lorenzhs 10y ago> Everything has a cost, and someone has to pay it. In Europe, the interchange fee (what the retailer's bank pays to the card company) is limited to 0.3% for credit cards and 0.2% for debit cards. This came into effect sometime last year.
- snuxoll 10y agoAre you sure that's not 3% and 2%? When you consider the banks are on the hook for fradulent charges the interchange fee is their buffer to cover this (plus the myriad reward programs most banks offer).
- germanier 10y agoYes, those numbers are correct, see e.g. http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/financial_services/enforcement_en.html http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/financial_services/e... and http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/financial_services/payments_en.html http://ec.europa.eu/competition/sectors/financial_services/p... for an overview. Reward programs always have been a bit less pronounced here in Europe and mostly have been reduced after the regulation of interchange fees.
- hx87 10y agoThe extra few seconds or so for a chip transaction don't really matter, as long as I have the ability to insert the card whenever I want, such as before an item is scanned. It's really annoying and unnecessary for a POS to reject an inserted card just because it's too early in the transaction process.
- coderdude 10y agoFor me, the extra time isn't too much of a burden. It does take longer than a few seconds but that's not my beef with it. My beef is with the problem of "so, what do I do? Insert or swipe?" Some places require inserting. Some places still use swiping. There's a swipe area and an insert slot. The cashier looks at you like you're new to using credit cards when you don't guess the right method, even though it's different everywhere you go. It's a mess and apparently the chip isn't even a requirement. Screw the chip.
- gherkin0 10y agoHonestly, I thought things were a whole lot better (from a UX perspective) when you just handed the cashier the card and they operated the card reader for you. They know their system's idiosyncrasies; the customer doesn't. I'm unhappy that stores have been pushing more and more cashier work onto the customer without adopting an industry standard UI for their payment systems.
- ryanlm 10y agoThe whole chip thing takes like 30 more seconds. I'm considering carrying cash to just save time.
- germanier 10y agoThat's not inherent in the chip technology. Terminals in Sweden do the same processing with the same cards faster than you can blink. They also allow you to insert the card and enter the PIN while items are still being scanned. You just need to confirm the total amount and can directly take your card without waiting. The chip also enables contactless transactions which is even faster.
- knz 10y agoNew Zealand is the same. Processing is almost instant. It's infuriatingly slow in the US.
- lostlogin 10y agoTop tip. If you damage your magnetic strip but the chip is fine, don't go to the Coromandel without another payment method. They don't have chip readers there.
- sp332 10y agoI think it depends on the particular POS system. I'm in the US, and some stores let you swipe while your things are being rung up and others make you wait until the end. I also haven't had to wait a long time for my chip to work, but I haven't used it much.
- lorenzhs 10y agoNormally it's under 10 seconds for me with a chip and PIN debit card, the by far most common card payment method in Germany and the UK. Most credit cards here (Germany) are chip and signature, but they are used less commonly in stores. My credit card has a PIN, but I've never used it.
- MBCook 10y ago
- skynetv2 10y agoI tried Samsung Pay & Android Pay exclusively for a few days and gave up very soon. I even used Google Wallet (NFC) when it first came out. There were a couple of times when Samsung Pay blocked all payments until an update was applied and the change log had nothing to do with payment functionality but with other useless & unrelated stuff like "better notifications" "better deals". NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING about a security issue, a flaw or a hole that was being used to steal money. I havent had too many issues with Android Pay but still its the same issue ... instead of a simple swipe and go, and my ability to use my money in anyway I want and I am not at the mercy of an app developer who is acting as a gatekeeper to access my money so he/she/it can control what I need on my phone / my device to use my money whenever I want so they can push their agenda that has nothing to do with me using my money. no thanks. thats not even including the additional cut the app provider takes and increases my price effectively. I'd rather pay one middleman. Credit Cards dont need to be "fixed" or "solved". As a customer, its easy to use, widely accepted and my risks are covered 100% by the issuer. I cant say the same for phone payment methods.
- germanier 10y agoSomeone has to pay for the fraud and that's obviously getting to be the consumer in the end (indirectly through transaction cost).
- forgotpwtomain 10y agoYes - but since the merchant is the one liable you can assume those costs are being passed down to you either way (key part being the contractual obligation visa/mastercard assert that prohibits the merchant from charging you more for using a credit card). Therefore in the meanwhile you can be covered for fraud and a) get your 1-2% back b) get airline miles - or c) none of the above. Seems like an obvious choice?
- germanier 10y agoThe point is that for the whole system it's beneficial to move to a more secure system with less fraud. For the individual user of course less so.
- rjsw 10y agoI have just read a report of a trip to the US by someone from the UK. He was surprised how long it took to process a chip and pin transaction in the US, you don't notice any delay in machines in the UK.
- johneth 10y agoYou wouldn't happen to have a link to that, would you?
- Zombieball 10y agoCould you provide more details about the UX when using chip & pin in the US? What is this "delay"? Chip & PIN is quite prevalent up here in west coast Canada. Just wondering how our experience differs from yours.
- MBCook 10y agoStick your card in the reader, wait tens of seconds until it tells you that you can remove it. Compared to something like ApplePay where you tap and it's processed in a few seconds or old swipe where it's even faster.
- azinman2 10y agoTens of seconds is an exaggeration. In my experience it's max 10 seconds. And that's assuming Apple Pay is recognizing your fingerprint or is coming up at all. Don't get me started if you have multiple cards linked to Apple Pay...
- thenewwazoo 10y agoI've timed it at the WF next door and it is ~13s. Not "tens", but significantly more than your "max" of 10.
- ams6110 10y agoIn my experiences it's between 10 and 20 seconds. The places that haven't yet updated their terminals and still swipe cards are much faster.
- josefresco 10y ago"Of course these few seconds don't matter that much per transaction" My anecdotal experience has shown this to be an extreme pain in some cases for both consumers and retailers. Any sort of business with frequent CC payments and high volume sees their POS wait time explode. Two personal examples: Attended a cinema, where they had to delay the movie time due to long CC processing times. Bought food at a takeout place, with clear signs instructions (to avoid) and apologies for the delays caused by chip readers.
- raverbashing 10y ago> Attended a cinema, where they had to delay the movie time due to long CC processing times. Bought food at a takeout place, with clear signs instructions (to avoid) and apologies for the delays caused by chip readers. This is a sign of their incompetence. Period The whole rest of the world uses this without a problem.
- ultramancool 10y ago> The whole rest of the world uses this without a problem. Not really true. The rest of the world has had it and moved on, and this is a main reason why. In my country at least, we're now on to tap-to-pay credit and debit cards in recent years, which is faster than the old school swipe and sign and much faster than the chip.
- seanp2k2 10y agoBay Area is just now getting chip readers active in many places. They started installing them a year ago or so, but many had the slot taped off. The experience now at most places goes something like this: 1. cashier done scanning items 2. person swipes card since reader has a slot to do that on the right side and that's what they usually do 3. machine beeps or displays an error or does nothing 4. cashier has to explain to insert the card 5. person fumbles with card, eventually getting it into slot 6. sometimes people just push it in and pull it out or otherwise don't leave it in long enough since every single POS has a different workflow and dialogue for this, and this error condition requires re-starting the process (GOTO 3) 7. Waiting 3-10+ seconds 8. Sign 9. Hit yes or accept or I agree 10. Wait another few seconds 11. Remove or forget card. Sometimes the machine beeps, sometimes not 12. Done! Despite all this hassle, we still didn't get chip and pin that I had been complaining about for years, so if someone steals your physical card, they can still use it until you realize. I'm not really sure how this whole process improves security (does the actual CC number no longer enter the POS at any point?) but consumers here are definitely having some growing pains with the new system and the current state of supporting both old and new systems.
- buro9 10y agoThis must be a US only thing. In the UK nearly all cards can be used for contactless payments below a fixed amount (£ 30 at the moment). Additional security (inconvenience) only kicks in on higher price purchases. Additionally, there is no time delay for contactless, and chip and pin is extremely fast too. Contactless is far faster than even unlocking your phone (even if you use a fingerprint unlock), and can usually be done concurrent to the cashier putting your item in a bag or reaching to pass it to you... it is essentially frictionless. This all works so well I find myself doing something I never though I would... I've abandoned cash. Contactless payments are that good, and fast, and work at the end of the day when my phone is out of battery, and works for every one of my daily casual purchases (travel, food, a book, some toiletries, some groceries, etc).
- dnlbyl 10y agoContactless cards did exist here in the US a number of years ago. I had one from Chase. Then around 2014 when it expired, the replacement card did not have contactless payment anymore. According to this article it was simply a lack of demand: http://www.digitaltransactions.net/news/story/Chase-To-Discontinue-Its-Blink-Contactless-Card_-But-It_s-Unlikely-To-Slow-EMV-Migration http://www.digitaltransactions.net/news/story/Chase-To-Disco...
- tomp 10y agoMy experience from the US is... interesting. I tapped-and-paid $700 (not a typo) when visiting NY... and American Express had no idea I was in the US (unless they cooperate with US Border Controll). In the UK, I'm limited to 30 GBP.
- hinkley 10y agoIf 'tap my phone to pay' sprouted a confirmation window with the amount to be charged, I'd never use a card again. Until the device that authorizes the payment is owned by me, there's always a great deal of opportunity for chicanery.
- hackuser 10y ago> "tap my phone to pay" ... offers greater security than any of the above I doubt the security is greater: * Phones have a far larger attack surface and are regularly exploited. * Confidentiality is part of security, and I don't want my purchases tied to the rest of my phone data and identity.
- umeshunni 10y agoNeither of those statements are true. Read up on payment network tokenization.
- makecheck 10y agoNot that I know the entire implementation but I believe the phone has secure-element hardware that decouples sensitive material from the rest of the device. Therefore, in theory, attacking “the phone” gives you no access to (say) a credit card number. This should be a relatively small attack surface.
- SEJeff 10y agoCorrect, even if IOS is root level compromised it doesn't matter, as the secure element is a self contained hardware security module: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_security_module https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_security_module
- hackuser 10y agoWhat about Android phones, which are over 80% of the market?
- SEJeff 10y agoNope, most android phones (that I'm aware of) lack a dedicated HSM. The iPhone 6+ was I believe the first general consumer phone that shipped with a HSM. Being a linux guy through and through, it is/was the reason I got a 6+ and I couldn't be happier. It isn't perfect, but it is a huge improvement over most other things out there. Motorolla has the horribly overpriced AME 2000 (ick), and Samsung has the knox platform built standard into most of their stuff (which is very good), but they lack a true HSM. If you're an android user and want a HSM for sensitive data, get one of the Microcrypt SD devices. It is as good as you'll get (and still not as good as an iPhone).
- nfoz 10y agoTap-pay with my Visa card is commonplace in downtown Toronto and faster and easier than doing the same with my phone. It's enough faster than chip+pin to make a difference. But the weird thing about chip+pin is that it's much slower in NYC than it is in Toronto or elsewhere in Canada. I can see why these mobile-pay systems are gaining ground in the U.S. where chip+pin is poorly supported in the rare places that it's actually supported at all. And I don't see anyone tap-pay'ing with their cards here. The infrastructure behind the tech makes a big difference for whether there's any room for mobile-pay to actually improve on credit-cards.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI've been doing this with a MasterCard Paypass-based card for probably close to ten years? Now I have a Visa card that's payWave based, which is essentially the same thing. The whole Android Pay/Apple Pay thing has been nice from a "more people have the terminal now" thing. But the card's tap function works so well, I can't imagine using my phone.
- wvenable 10y agoBoth tap and chip and pin are so fast now in Canada that it's great. The US payment infrastructure is still mostly terrible. In many cases, even with chip cards it's chip and signature!
- seanp2k2 10y agoWe don't have pins on our chip cards and as far as I'm aware, no bank is issuing CCs with pins with or without a chip. Debit cards use PINs, but bring a host of other liability problems to the user, and almost universally lack the rewards programs which consumers with good credit take advantage of (because hey, I get 2-3% towards travel expenses while paying the same).
- wvenable 10y ago> We don't have pins on our chip cards That seems to be true, what I can't figure out is why.
- martin_bech 10y agoWe have "tap card to pay" in Denmark. If amount is below 200Dkk (30ish USD) no PIN is needed. Its very fast, very secure and our credit card fees for merchants, are much much lover.
- guelo 10y agoWhat's ironic is that the old school mag swipe cards are more convenient than Apple Pay but the new chip cards are so slow that it does open up a convenience gap for Apple Pay to gain mind share.
- pdpi 10y agoIn the UK at least, contactless payment with your card is pervasive, so Apple Pay and "tap and hope your finger is correctly aligned or you look like a muppet" is a worse experience than my card's much cleaner "tap to pay"
- bunnymancer 10y ago> Of course these few seconds don't matter that much per transaction, Yeah they do. To the point that both Visa and MasterCard opposed even introducing chips for years. For that sole reason. It's one of the main causes of the incredibly long delay the US has seen to their card security.
- the_watcher 10y ago> the "tap my phone to pay" offerings Are generally wildly insecure.
- AJ007 10y agoThere is definitely an opening in the retail payments market right now. The chip thing is a major problem for high volume retail. That extra time adds up in a very big way, just like latency in a network. -Instead of getting quicker, payments just got slower -Apple and Google have the credit card companies on to their payment platforms now -Minimum wage moving toward $15+ an hour means cashiers need to double speed/efficiency -Interest rates are extremely low, which means cash flowing transactions is cheaper for any party The payment terminal is already being leapfrogged at Starbucks with mobile ordering. Retail stores could require identification and payment method in order to enter the store, and then bill you as you walk out using mobile sensors. This wouldn't be any more unusual than needing a membership to get in to Costco. The membership contract could over ride traditional payment transaction rules. There are tipping points in terms of costs vs lost revenue but I suspect things are going to move away from cash and physical cards really quickly. Like Uber, rather than being a negative, this will be seen as a huge positive by the majority of users.
- gakada 10y agoThe London underground ticket barriers support both Apple Pay and contactless cards. Using Apple Pay is a guaranteed way to enrage everybody standing behind you in the queue. It's not fast enough. The fingerprint reader isn't perfectly reliable. And I am terrified of dropping my phone and it being trampled.
- BillinghamJ 10y agoWhile the phone is locked, double click the home button and leave your thumb rested on the button for a second. It will set up an Apple Pay payment and leave it ready to go. It lasts for 60 seconds before requiring authorisation again. So simply preload the transaction as you're walking to the barrier, then touch your phone on the reader. Usually it is fractionally faster than contactless cards.
- casion 10y agoA problem with this is that not everyone has a smart phone, and expecting someone to spend what can be a large sum of cell fees to make purchases is just not reasonable.
- abalone 10y agoHere's the deal: Chip-and-PIN is slow to function because it is a two decade old technology. Modern "tap my phone to pay" (Apple/Android Pay) is a lot more secure thanks to tokenization and mandatory PIN/fingerprint use. It is the future, but it's not yet at 100% penetration. Banks can't issue you a new phone when you sign up for an account. So merchants and card networks are squabbling over how to evolve the baseline method of physical cards that will still be around for awhile. There is no reason to think that the 2-3% tax is going away anytime soon once you understand the network dynamics. The key element that almost everyone overlooks, even people on HN building alternative payment systems, is that that tax mostly gets refunded to consumers via reward programs. It does not just go into Visa or the banks' coffers. They certainly take a healthy slice of it at scale but they key point is, they have aligned themselves with consumer interests. Reward programs keep consumers loyal to the "high tax" system, because the tax mainly goes to them. This can be demonstrated very simply by comparing credit and debit usage rates. There is already a "low tax" payment method that has near 100% adoption in every consumer pocket and merchant register. It's called debit cards. They work exactly the same as credit cards at the register -- you can even sign for them (and it's no more expensive than PIN thanks to the Durbin amendment). Yet consumers still widely use credit cards. Why? Because no rewards. It's mostly merchants who would benefit from lower interchange fees, at least in the short run. So this is why Apple Pay et al did not try to build a lower-fee system. It would have misaligned them with consumers. This might shed some light on why Bitcoin never had much of a chance as an alternative consumer payment method.
- snuxoll 10y agoTap-to-pay and chip cards all use the same standard, EMV. Most of the problems with chip cards in the US are because of incredibly slow terminals or applications on the smart card themselves. Since the terminals are much faster dealing with tap-to-pay I'm guessing their either just take forever to initialize the smart card, or it's the latter issue (application on the card itself). I'm curious as to the experience of people taking EMV cards from the US to Europe, is it any faster than in the states on the same terminal hardware?
- Veratyr 10y ago
- jest3r1 10y agoMy MasterCard is tap to pay and it's better than using the phone. Smaller lighter. I always have my wallet. Don't always have my phone.
- Randin 10y agoIn Australia Paywave is much faster than phone payments. Anything under $100.00 and you just tap the screen with you're card, wait a second for approval then walk off, no signature or pin needed.
- vollmond 10y agoFor a couple of years my debit card was paywave. When it worked it was excellent, though it seemed to fail about 20% of the time (I'd end up swiping). Then my bank removed it on their newer cards. I was sad.
- quantumhobbit 10y agoAs far as I understand, the phones rely on real crypto to verify transactions without exposing secrets to the merchant. The chip and whatever cards despite taking 10 or more seconds are still just transferring the secret to the merchant. So once criminals figure out how to make copies they will be no more secure.
- craigds 10y agoNot true, both chip and contactless are signing a challenge with a secret that doesn't leave the card.
- speeder 10y agoThe idea os needing my extremely unreliable and expensive phone that I don't have money to replace to make payments horrifies me.
- mhenr18 10y agoSee, all of these "you won't have to carry a card ever" schemes that involve tapping a phone seem to not care that people have other cards to care about. Why bother with all of this effort to move payments onto my phone (which has a battery that dies), when I already have a wallet with my drivers license, public and private health insurance cards, my public transport payment card and my swipe card to get into the office? The problem is not that a phone is fundamentally better for this stuff, the problem is that you're yet to be provided a card-based alternative that works well. For transactions under $100, card payments in Australia don't require authorisation (I'm unsure if this is a legal requirement, or if it's just a de-facto standard that most of our banks have adopted). You just wave the card and you're good to go - the payment processes using the same mechanism as tapping a phone so it's just as fast. It's actually more convenient in most cases as many places don't have their credit card terminals right in front of where you're served, so the cashier has to walk over to a terminal. With a card, I hand it to them and say "just tap" - they handle the rest while I wait and talk with whoever I'm with (or check my phone if I'm on my own). With a phone, I'd have to walk over to the terminal, wait for the cashier to key in the pricing and then hope that Touch ID won't stuff up while I hold it near the contactless reader. I also can't check my phone while I'm doing that, because I need to use it to make the payment. Tapping cards works so well and is so widely supported that I was able to live just fine with a near-destroyed debit MasterCard (and zero cash) for nearly six months a few years ago. The plastic was coming off and prevented it from being inserted into a terminal, but by 2012/2013 our retail sector had such widespread support for contactless payments that it didn't matter. For the purchases over $100 I made, I tapped and then entered my PIN. Despite Australia being the highest users of contactless payments in the world (per capita, of course), Apple Pay has had a very slow launch here. It only works for Amex (which no one uses as no one accepts it due to high fees), and MasterCard/VISA cards for one of our big four banks. The banks aren't interested in dealing with Apple due to extra fees that Apple wants to impose, and consumers aren't pressuring the banks or Apple to make a compromise because the current experience is already good enough. Maybe there's something "magical" that I'm missing out on, but I really don't get why phone-based payments are being so widely hyped. It's already a solved problem.
- devishard 10y ago> It seems to me that these alternatives (Chip & sign, chip and pin, carrying a credit card at all) all compete poorly with the "tap my phone to pay" offerings. Sometimes I need to read comments like this to remind me that Hacker News is full of people who live inside the SF tech bubble where this sentence is considered a reasonable idea, and I shouldn't take HN too seriously.
- rhino369 10y agoI still have never seen someone use Apple Pay or android pay in real life. I live in DC. I've used Apple Pay for lyft but it's more annoying than uber just having my card on file. I don't even know how to swipe my phone.
- HNSucksAss 10y agoIt's not faster. It's not even AS fast. Once again the U.S. fails and looks stupid. After decades, we finally get chip cards, but then retailers don't demand PIN entry. WTF? Not to mention that by now we were all supposed to be carrying a smart card that combined all of our credit cards, medical cards and records, and loyalty cards into one. Yeah, that technology was available in the mid-'90s. Yet here we are, looking like fools.
- bogomipz 10y agoI took impute the US credit card agency's taking forever to deliver the US a safer card alternative like Europe's "chip and pin(EMV)" system to just plain laziness and a lack of desire to invest. I believe Europe has had this chip and pin technology for something like 20 years so we just finally upgraded to 20 year old technology. For some reason the credit card cabal decided that after all this time that instead giving the US "the chip and pin which would be compatible with the EU system they gave us "chip and pin" which incidentally takes much longer to process a card, and I am almost never asked to actually sing my transaction. You have to ask WTF on all this? The rational I hear about why the US went with "chip and sign" rather than "chip and pin" is that they feared that US card holders if they have to memorize pin numbers they would likely stop using there other credit cards(lots of people in the US have 3 or 4) and just use the single one they decided to memorize. Memorizing pins was at odd with encouraging maximal credit card use.
- gerbilly 10y ago>It seems to me that these alternatives ... all compete poorly with the "tap my phone to pay" offerings. I don't always carry my phone. A credit card requires no power supply either. Of course cash is preferable to both.