7 ms·

Additional question: why is it faster in other countries? The first time I used a chip card in the US I was astounded by how long it took. I had been using chip

by ca12et 9y ago

Additional question: why is it faster in other countries? The first time I used a chip card in the US I was astounded by how long it took. I had been using chip (and pin) cards in Canada for years and it was never as slow as it is in the states.

laurentoget 9y ago
Same impression here. I lived in France when chips were adopted 30 years or so years ago and i do not remember them being slower than the stripe version.
- sverhagen 9y ago
  These are completely different (mostly national) systems, evidently optimized for different things. For example, in the Netherlands there is still plenty of retailers that don't even accept EMV cards (there is only a small number of (mostly foreign) visitors that'd be interested in such transactions, also the costs of supporting these are typically higher than just supporting the national system).
- hocuspocus 9y ago
  Try to pay with a foreign card in France and you'll see it can be pretty slow. Chips were introduced in France at a time where connecting all terminals wasn't practical/cheap. For this historical reason, most payment terminals aren't processing the transaction online in presence of a domestic card, even if they can. Offline transactions are very quick.
  - shawnz 9y ago
    So if offline transactions are viable, and faster, then why doesn't the US use them?
    - kalleboo 9y ago
      They were viable 30 years ago, maybe not today
rodgerd 9y ago
When first rolled out in New Zealand it was quite slow - as the EFTPOS hardware fleet was updated the performance improved to the point where chip-and-pin was just as quick as swipe-and-pin. If it's slow in the US I would expect it's merchants choosing not to upgrade their terminals.
sanswork 9y ago
Just a theory but is it possible that the prevalence of DATAPAC in Canada means that most merchants were use to having a dedicated always on line just for their terminals and continued to have one after DATAPAC went away?
Swizec 9y ago
Here's an even more fun protip from the US chip+pin implementation: You don't need the PIN. On most terminals, using a US debit card (Chase at least), you can press the green button without entering a PIN and it lets you through. Doesn't ask for a signature either.
smnscu 9y ago
Great question! Once I moved back to Romania after living in UK, Germany, and Israel for a while, I was pleasantly surprised how paying with a credit card here is almost instant – we even have contactless PoSes everywhere.
- benbristow 9y ago
  If you ever come back to the UK you'll be rather impressed. Pretty much everywhere accepts Contactless now. Contactless POSes aren't really a thing though apart from Santander I think.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    I believe the OP means POS as in Point Of Sales. Santander tends to have ATMs, as in Automated Teller Machines :)
  - gambiting 9y ago
    UKs implementation of contactless is still behind other countries in the EU. In most other places I can use contactless to pay any amount, the terminal will simply ask for my pin if the transaction is over the pin-less payment threshold. In the UK that's impossible - even if the terminal displays the contactless logo when you are attempting to pay over 30 pounds, if you attempt to use your card that way it will just beep and tell you to insert the card. I'm guessing it's a peculiarity of UK banks which decided they would rather disable this system even though the terminals do technically support it.
    - dx034 9y ago
      That's not entirely correct. Some countries (e.g. Spain) have no floor limit and request a PIN, others use the same system as the UK (e.g. Germany). Wikipedia has a detailed list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment
      - darklajid 9y ago
angrygoat 9y ago
Here in Australia, pretty much every retailer now has "paypass", which is the .au branding for contactless credit card payments. Most payment terminals are connected to 3G or 4G mobile networks, and from tapping the card to confirmation of payment takes two seconds tops. Transactions over $100 do require the PIN, but you can usually enter that on the terminal without being required to insert your card.
- dx034 9y ago
  Paypass is actually the Mastercard version of contactless payments. The name is used in other countries as well. Visa calls it payWave, maybe retailers just put up one of the names.
  - shavingspiders 9y ago
    I believe you're right. In .au they call it PayPass, but in .nz they call it PayWave. I believe some old Visa machines didn't support MasterCard, or the other way round. All I remember is my flatmate complaining that his new debit card kept failing contactless payments.
  - davidbanham 9y ago
    Yeah for some reason paypass was just the one that stuck in the collective consciousness here. The points of sale have paywave branding too, but people call it paypass. The truly weird .au thing is that many merchants take your card and tap it for you. A holdover from the days when people got confused by all the options in swiping/inserting and selecting an account.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      I recall reading an article from last year, when NFC-based payment was introduced at the German supermarket chain Rewe. The author went out to test it, but the cashiers didn't know how it worked. The author himself figured it out for himself, and just started touching the phone to the cardreader at the appropriate moment, when the cashier was waiting for him to present either cash or a card. The cashiers were allegedly oftentimes confused by the reader beeping to indicate success, and two receipts being printed (instead of the usual three). Also, while I was looking around to see whether I could find the original article, I saw an article describing that German banks want to eliminate traditional banking cards and do everything via NFC-enabled apps on smartphones. WHAT CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
Edit: Forget what I'm saying. I may be misremembering things. Batch is a thing, but maybe not the reason why chip and pin is fast in the EU. Like I say elsewhere this is very likely a regional thing, having to do with regulations that either require the transaction to be completed in one go, or permit it to be stored in a batch to be processed overnight. I live in the UK and travel around the EU a bit (France, Italy, Greece, Belgium recently) and I've never noticed chip-and-pin being slow in any way. That's because in most of those countries at least, as far as I can tell, transactions are stored and processed in overnight batches instead of being sent online to be dealt with immediately, which may take a long time depending on the network connection etc. From what I understand, most places outside the EU don't do batch, they send the transaction online to be completed immediately. Which can take quite a bit longer.
- rimliu 9y ago
  It's fast in my country (EU member). Like no-more-than-five-seconds fast. Most of the time even faster. And it has nothing to do with batches, because if I check my balance in my banking app I can already see the transaction there right after checkout. Maybe infrastructure connecting PoSes and banks sucks in US?
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    It's been a while since I worked for an EMV vendor and I didn't remember that very clearly, but sometimes transactions are handled entirely offline. It depends on what card you have and where you're shopping (or, more specifically, your card issuer and the transaction acquirer, who determines the settings on the pinpad). The card and the pinpad together make a decision about whether to send the transaction online or keep it offline and this decision may involve the connection speed of the device and the amount of money you spend. So, in some cases you might check your account and notice that the money has not been taken out yet. Or you might not even check because the amount you spent was very low. Obviously, if the connection speed is high enough there's no point in staying offline, so you'll always see your balance changing pretty much instantly. But, like I say, this depends on where you're shopping, what you're buying and what card you're using.

by ca12et 9y ago

laurentoget 9y ago

Same impression here. I lived in France when chips were adopted 30 years or so years ago and i do not remember them being slower than the stripe version.

sverhagen 9y ago
These are completely different (mostly national) systems, evidently optimized for different things. For example, in the Netherlands there is still plenty of retailers that don't even accept EMV cards (there is only a small number of (mostly foreign) visitors that'd be interested in such transactions, also the costs of supporting these are typically higher than just supporting the national system).
hocuspocus 9y ago
Try to pay with a foreign card in France and you'll see it can be pretty slow. Chips were introduced in France at a time where connecting all terminals wasn't practical/cheap. For this historical reason, most payment terminals aren't processing the transaction online in presence of a domestic card, even if they can. Offline transactions are very quick.
- shawnz 9y ago
  So if offline transactions are viable, and faster, then why doesn't the US use them?
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    They were viable 30 years ago, maybe not today

rodgerd 9y ago

When first rolled out in New Zealand it was quite slow - as the EFTPOS hardware fleet was updated the performance improved to the point where chip-and-pin was just as quick as swipe-and-pin. If it's slow in the US I would expect it's merchants choosing not to upgrade their terminals.

sanswork 9y ago

Just a theory but is it possible that the prevalence of DATAPAC in Canada means that most merchants were use to having a dedicated always on line just for their terminals and continued to have one after DATAPAC went away?

Swizec 9y ago

Here's an even more fun protip from the US chip+pin implementation: You don't need the PIN. On most terminals, using a US debit card (Chase at least), you can press the green button without entering a PIN and it lets you through. Doesn't ask for a signature either.

smnscu 9y ago

Great question! Once I moved back to Romania after living in UK, Germany, and Israel for a while, I was pleasantly surprised how paying with a credit card here is almost instant – we even have contactless PoSes everywhere.

benbristow 9y ago
If you ever come back to the UK you'll be rather impressed. Pretty much everywhere accepts Contactless now. Contactless POSes aren't really a thing though apart from Santander I think.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  I believe the OP means POS as in Point Of Sales. Santander tends to have ATMs, as in Automated Teller Machines :)
- gambiting 9y ago
  UKs implementation of contactless is still behind other countries in the EU. In most other places I can use contactless to pay any amount, the terminal will simply ask for my pin if the transaction is over the pin-less payment threshold. In the UK that's impossible - even if the terminal displays the contactless logo when you are attempting to pay over 30 pounds, if you attempt to use your card that way it will just beep and tell you to insert the card. I'm guessing it's a peculiarity of UK banks which decided they would rather disable this system even though the terminals do technically support it.
  - dx034 9y ago
    That's not entirely correct. Some countries (e.g. Spain) have no floor limit and request a PIN, others use the same system as the UK (e.g. Germany). Wikipedia has a detailed list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment
    - darklajid 9y ago

angrygoat 9y ago

Here in Australia, pretty much every retailer now has "paypass", which is the .au branding for contactless credit card payments. Most payment terminals are connected to 3G or 4G mobile networks, and from tapping the card to confirmation of payment takes two seconds tops. Transactions over $100 do require the PIN, but you can usually enter that on the terminal without being required to insert your card.

dx034 9y ago
Paypass is actually the Mastercard version of contactless payments. The name is used in other countries as well. Visa calls it payWave, maybe retailers just put up one of the names.
- shavingspiders 9y ago
  I believe you're right. In .au they call it PayPass, but in .nz they call it PayWave. I believe some old Visa machines didn't support MasterCard, or the other way round. All I remember is my flatmate complaining that his new debit card kept failing contactless payments.
- davidbanham 9y ago
  Yeah for some reason paypass was just the one that stuck in the collective consciousness here. The points of sale have paywave branding too, but people call it paypass. The truly weird .au thing is that many merchants take your card and tap it for you. A holdover from the days when people got confused by all the options in swiping/inserting and selecting an account.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    I recall reading an article from last year, when NFC-based payment was introduced at the German supermarket chain Rewe. The author went out to test it, but the cashiers didn't know how it worked. The author himself figured it out for himself, and just started touching the phone to the cardreader at the appropriate moment, when the cashier was waiting for him to present either cash or a card. The cashiers were allegedly oftentimes confused by the reader beeping to indicate success, and two receipts being printed (instead of the usual three). Also, while I was looking around to see whether I could find the original article, I saw an article describing that German banks want to eliminate traditional banking cards and do everything via NFC-enabled apps on smartphones. WHAT CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

Edit: Forget what I'm saying. I may be misremembering things. Batch is a thing, but maybe not the reason why chip and pin is fast in the EU. Like I say elsewhere this is very likely a regional thing, having to do with regulations that either require the transaction to be completed in one go, or permit it to be stored in a batch to be processed overnight. I live in the UK and travel around the EU a bit (France, Italy, Greece, Belgium recently) and I've never noticed chip-and-pin being slow in any way. That's because in most of those countries at least, as far as I can tell, transactions are stored and processed in overnight batches instead of being sent online to be dealt with immediately, which may take a long time depending on the network connection etc. From what I understand, most places outside the EU don't do batch, they send the transaction online to be completed immediately. Which can take quite a bit longer.

rimliu 9y ago
It's fast in my country (EU member). Like no-more-than-five-seconds fast. Most of the time even faster. And it has nothing to do with batches, because if I check my balance in my banking app I can already see the transaction there right after checkout. Maybe infrastructure connecting PoSes and banks sucks in US?
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  It's been a while since I worked for an EMV vendor and I didn't remember that very clearly, but sometimes transactions are handled entirely offline. It depends on what card you have and where you're shopping (or, more specifically, your card issuer and the transaction acquirer, who determines the settings on the pinpad). The card and the pinpad together make a decision about whether to send the transaction online or keep it offline and this decision may involve the connection speed of the device and the amount of money you spend. So, in some cases you might check your account and notice that the money has not been taken out yet. Or you might not even check because the amount you spent was very low. Obviously, if the connection speed is high enough there's no point in staying offline, so you'll always see your balance changing pretty much instantly. But, like I say, this depends on where you're shopping, what you're buying and what card you're using.