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This 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 (
by buro9 10y ago
This 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.
- dandandan 10y agoDid you buy the ticket with your American Express card? The data transmitted by the merchant (airline) includes some basic itinerary information.
- tedmiston 10y agoThat would be awesome if the CC provider automatically created a travel notification for you upon booking.
- lostlogin 10y agoThe next few decades of adverts that I couldn't unsubscribe from would be less than awesome though.
- tjohns 10y agoSome do. Many airlines transmit level 3 purchase data as part of the credit card transaction, which will contain your complete itinerary -- which can be fed into the bank's risk system.
- saryant 10y agoAmex already takes this into account.
- tomp 10y agoNo, I haven't, that's exactly the point! And I think that's the first transaction I've made in the US..
- zippergz 10y agoYou can still get contactless cards from Amex at least (I'm not sure about Chase). But you have to specifically request them (and hope you can find a CS rep who knows what you're asking for). I think it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing - it's hard to get a true measure of demand when people don't even know it's a possibility...
- knz 10y agoLack of demand or lack of interest from the banks to invest in the technology/security? I'd love to know why the US adopted "Chip and Signature" rather than "Chip and Pin". Requiring a signature is essentially worthless. My understanding was that it was a combination of US customers not being familiar with using a PIN and concern over where the liability lies if fraud occurs (the assumption being that if someone uses a PIN then the card owner gave them the PIN).
- mjevans 10y agoMy guess is that the signature thing probably carries more weight as a contract for payment owed; and if that's not actually true it still feels true enough to make it more of a comfort to the retailers/customers.
- Amezarak 10y agoI don't think chip and signature is a requirement - most places seem to ask for a PIN rather than a signature. Just swiping the card, however, also works just fine and I now use it everywhere again because I can't be bothered to remember and type in yet another passcode. Just more friction in the process.
- phil21 10y ago> most places seem to ask for a PIN rather than a signature That is for debit, which is an entirely different thing than credit. There are no US banks that implement Chip & PIN. Heck, it's nearly impossible to get a Chip & PIN capable card for travel if you have a US issuing bank. Swipe support will in theory eventually be disabled (e.g. authorizations declined by your issuing bank) at some point in the future when Chip & Signature is being rolled out. If you're typing your PIN code into a terminal in the US, you are using debit though.
- Amezarak 10y agoI only ever use a credit card, so I'm not sure that's true. Or can you debit a credit card?
- donatj 10y agoI had one from Wells Fargo and was pretty sad when my new card didn't have it. I used to love to pay for things without taking my card out of my wallet.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoThat doesn't make sense, adding the contactless facility mustn't cost more than pennies. As a store owner contactless saves a lot of friction and time at check out. Once the transaction is processed on the terminal surely the whole system upstream is identical.
- jordigh 10y agoSame here in Canada, for slightly more (100 CAD, I believe). It's incredibly convenient. So easy to spend money! Tap, tap, tap with just a dumb card. During a recent trip to the US, they had to swipe my card and make me sign a piece of paper (which I gleefully sign with an "X" as if I were illiterate). It felt so backwards.
- brazzledazzle 10y agoSome US establishments seem to have stopped requiring a signature under a certain dollar amount but the tap capability isn't universal and I've noticed that it even varies across locations. So either they're pilot testing or some other factor like franchise vs. corporate are at play.
- alistairSH 10y agoThe tap to pay has actually become less common, in my experience. At one point, two of my cards supported it. Now, none of them do. Le sigh.
- jessriedel 10y agoI lived in the US then moved to Ontario. I find that about 70% of card readers here have "NO TAP" taped across the top. Since the insert chip, enter code, wait, and approve process actually takes longer than the swipe-and-sign in the US, I've found the time spent, averaged over my actually purchases, to be about the same. It probably has more potential to improve in the future.
- jordigh 10y agoI tap everywhere in Mtl. It's rare for me to find terminals where I can't tap.
- kalleboo 10y agoBack in Sweden, Chip-and-PIN was so efficient - you can insert your card, enter your pin, and get an authorization all meanwhile the cashier is ringing up your goods. Then when the total is done, you just hit "OK" on the final amount and in seconds you're done. In pretty much every other country I've visited, you have to do the whole process serially after the total is done, which is quite slow.
- tedmiston 10y ago> In the UK nearly all cards can be used for contactless payments below a fixed amount (£ 30 at the moment). This sounds really interesting. I've had chip cards in the U.S. for a couple years, but I've never seen someone use a contactless payment card here. Even tap to pay with phone is very uncommon.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoYep. I worked for a company that "did" debit/credit card handling at the point of sale ( not clearing ) and the Smart Card guys were right down the hall. This around 1989-1995. The Smart Card guys mostly sold to Europe. It hasn't much caught on here, and I'd say that's mainly due to inertia.
- dv_dt 10y agoIn the UK and Europe, didn't governments essentially force banks into the modern age in terms of electronic payments that your contactless and contact cards use? By comparison banks in the US use the debit card & ACH system which has many issues compared to credit cards and European payment systems.
- lobster_johnson 10y agoCan't speak for all of Europe, but in Norway, the banks did it of their own accord. They got their heads together in the early 1990s and founded a private company, co-owned by all the banks, that has been stewarding the technology used for inter-bank transfers and card payments. They've been quite good at this — Norway has had chip and pin since the early 2000s, and contactless payments (using NFC in ordinary cards, not phones) have existed for a few years now. Money transfers are also completely effortless; all you need is the other person's bank account number. For consumers, the main hurdle remaining is the speed of transfers between banks. They only perform transfers in bulk twice a day (and for years they only did it once a day).
- narrowrail 10y agoNobody here has mentioned the Merchant Category Codes, which is what governs the max amount before a transaction is required to have sig or PIN. I'm sure it varies by country too, but I only have experience with the US system. Edit:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_category_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_category_code
- therealidiot 10y agoHaha, I've done the opposite. I found it was too easy to spend money, that I was doing so without thinking as much of it as I would have in the past. I've gone back to cash as a form of self control