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I just moved to the States from Canada. Surprised me how far behind payment technologies are here. Swiping is at least as common as the chip readers. I have bee

I just moved to the States from Canada. Surprised me how far behind payment technologies are here. Swiping is at least as common as the chip readers. I have been to two places that accepted tap and it blew the employee's mind both times that I had a card capable of doing that. I find this an especially entertaining juxtaposition with the transit systems. In Canada, you swipe on the bus and tap in the stores; in the US, swipe in store, tap on the bus.

hughes 9y ago
I found that strange as well. Chip and signature, or swipe and pin are the common options. Both miss the entire security aspect of chip and pin.
- phil21 9y ago
  As with all strange things, they can usually be explained by incentives. Banks get paid far less interchange rates for Chip & PIN than they do signature. Thus the system we have. So some banks can skim an extra .5-2% off the top of every single transaction in the US.
  - techsupporter 9y ago
    > Banks get paid far less interchange rates for Chip & PIN than they do signature. This only applies if the PIN is being used for debit. I have two credit cards[0] that are issued by US-based financial institutions and, when the chip reader is equipped to do so, result in a prompt for a PIN when used. The interchange rate is as a normal credit card. The bigger issue, as has been explained to me by two people I know who work in payment tech, is that credit card issuers in the States are utterly panicked by the idea of doing anything that might result in even a small fraction of a percent of their cardholders switching to another card. PINs are seen as inducing friction or a previously-unknown step into the payment process (since US customers have been conditioned for 20 years to "enter a PIN for debit" and "sign for credit"). To now change to PIN-primary cards would result in confused customers, higher support costs, and plenty of customers switching either to another credit card or to (the horrors) another payment method entirely, like cash. So the theory goes, anyway. Therefore, US banks are loathe to introduce cards that can be verified by PIN at all, much less ones that are primarily verified by PIN. 0 - They are not debit cards with VISA or MasterCard logos; they are actual credit cards accessing a line of credit. One comes from the State Department Federal Credit Union and the other from First Tech Federal Credit Union.
    - phil21 9y ago
      Interesting, I guess I always thought this applied to credit as well, just not as drastically. I stand corrected. > Increased revenue: In the US, the different in interchange rates between PIN-based debit and signature-based debit transactions can be substantial for larger dollar payments. Although Regulation II (a.k.a. the Durbin amendment) caused the card networks to reduce debit interchange rates for the largest card issuers to just 0.5% plus $0.22, this still results in interchange of about $0.72 on a $100, signature debit purchase. The same PIN-debit purchase might generate about $0.25 and possibly less in a area where there's substantial competition between PIN-debit networks. To be fair, this isn't true for credit card transactions (since there is effectively no such thing as a PIN-based credit card transaction in the US today and therefore no distinct interchange rates for PIN-based payments) but is does explain why there might be a general preference not to proliferate the use of PINs as the US card population and terminal base is converted to support EMV.[0] [0] - https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-USA-adopting-chip-signature-and-not-chip-pin https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-USA-adopting-chip-signature...

hughes 9y ago

I found that strange as well. Chip and signature, or swipe and pin are the common options. Both miss the entire security aspect of chip and pin.

phil21 9y ago
As with all strange things, they can usually be explained by incentives. Banks get paid far less interchange rates for Chip & PIN than they do signature. Thus the system we have. So some banks can skim an extra .5-2% off the top of every single transaction in the US.
- techsupporter 9y ago
  > Banks get paid far less interchange rates for Chip & PIN than they do signature. This only applies if the PIN is being used for debit. I have two credit cards[0] that are issued by US-based financial institutions and, when the chip reader is equipped to do so, result in a prompt for a PIN when used. The interchange rate is as a normal credit card. The bigger issue, as has been explained to me by two people I know who work in payment tech, is that credit card issuers in the States are utterly panicked by the idea of doing anything that might result in even a small fraction of a percent of their cardholders switching to another card. PINs are seen as inducing friction or a previously-unknown step into the payment process (since US customers have been conditioned for 20 years to "enter a PIN for debit" and "sign for credit"). To now change to PIN-primary cards would result in confused customers, higher support costs, and plenty of customers switching either to another credit card or to (the horrors) another payment method entirely, like cash. So the theory goes, anyway. Therefore, US banks are loathe to introduce cards that can be verified by PIN at all, much less ones that are primarily verified by PIN. 0 - They are not debit cards with VISA or MasterCard logos; they are actual credit cards accessing a line of credit. One comes from the State Department Federal Credit Union and the other from First Tech Federal Credit Union.
  - phil21 9y ago
    Interesting, I guess I always thought this applied to credit as well, just not as drastically. I stand corrected. > Increased revenue: In the US, the different in interchange rates between PIN-based debit and signature-based debit transactions can be substantial for larger dollar payments. Although Regulation II (a.k.a. the Durbin amendment) caused the card networks to reduce debit interchange rates for the largest card issuers to just 0.5% plus $0.22, this still results in interchange of about $0.72 on a $100, signature debit purchase. The same PIN-debit purchase might generate about $0.25 and possibly less in a area where there's substantial competition between PIN-debit networks. To be fair, this isn't true for credit card transactions (since there is effectively no such thing as a PIN-based credit card transaction in the US today and therefore no distinct interchange rates for PIN-based payments) but is does explain why there might be a general preference not to proliferate the use of PINs as the US card population and terminal base is converted to support EMV.[0] [0] - https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-USA-adopting-chip-signature-and-not-chip-pin https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-USA-adopting-chip-signature...