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I still don't get why all credit cards have magstripe when we have chip&pin for decades. Yes, I know it's required by a standard, but I see no justification for

by kbart 9y ago

I still don't get why all credit cards have magstripe when we have chip&pin for decades. Yes, I know it's required by a standard, but I see no justification for that. I have never used magstripe , but it's right there on my every card and there's no way to disable it (I've asked my bank for it), unless you deliberately destroy it (scratching or similar manner).

nikcub 9y ago
It's a backup. I've heard from retailers that the failure rate on the chips is much higher than it is for swiping. In Australia you pay for fuel after filling up, and one fuel station owner is dealing with an average of a driver or two a day who is unable to pay for fuel. They don't carry cash, the chip/EMV is failing and they don't have the mag stripe linked to a facility since they're often debit cards. Apparently the failure rate on phone based payments is also high(er). It's one of those issues I wouldn't have considered before speaking to retailers.
- dx034 9y ago
  That's why I always carry at least two cards. Cards fail, get blocked because of leaked data, bank fraud systems produce a lot of false positives etc.. The problem with a cashless society really is that you assume the tech is reliable. Unfortunately, that's often not the case.
- falsedan 9y ago
  Those bloody drongos should switch to pre-paid then. The unattended stations are all pre-paid…
- jordanthoms 9y ago
  Yeah, the chips are nowhere near as reliable as the magstripe. It seems like a transitional technology only - NFC is fast and reliable.
  - reaperducer 9y ago
    > NFC is fast and reliable I know you're speaking of NFC chips in cards, but you might know — Does the phone version (Apple Pay/Android Pay/Samsung Pay) still work when my phone's battery is dead?
    - jordanthoms 9y ago
      It won't - one reason why I think NFC-enabled cards will be around for a long time even people only carry one as a backup for their phone. Though theoretically your phone could have a RF-powered NFC chip in it that took over when the phone is off...
- chiph 9y ago
  When gas hit $4 a gallon in the US (yes that was considered expensive here), many of the stations disabled the "pump then pay" feature because of all the drive-offs they were getting (petrol theft). So you'd have to go inside to get the clerk to enable the pump.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  How do you deal with people pumping then just driving off?
  - daemin 9y ago
    Cameras, licence plate readers, and Police.
techsupporter 9y ago
From the words in your comment, you don't live in the United States. The reason payment cards the world over still have a mag stripe is because, until a few years ago, chip cards were simply not a thing in the U.S. so the facilities for reading them simply didn't (widely) exist. Therefore, cards from other countries had to have magnetic stripes in order to work in the U.S.[0] Even today, two years after the supposedly "drop dead date" for switching to chip cards, 40% of my transactions are by swiping. 0 - There are other reasons, like some ATMs reading the magstripe to ascertain whether a card has a chip and then prompting the user to leave the card in place. I've only encountered older ATMs that do this but it is another reason. But the most common one is that outside-the-U.S. issuers want their cards to work inside the U.S. if a customer of theirs travels there.
- kbart 9y ago
  "The reason payment cards the world over still have a mag stripe is because, until a few years ago, chip cards were simply not a thing in the U.S. " So let them have it, why should I care and endure security risk? I've never been to USA nor I'm planning to (at least not unless they fix that gestapo-like border control), but still my every card has a magstripe waiting to get skimmed. If I ever need to go to USA, I'll get a suitable card.
  - peteretep 9y ago
    I use a company called Revolut to manage a card of mine. One of the options in the app is to explicitly disabled Magstripe payments, so one wonders if you could ask your bank to disable it?
    - kbart 9y ago
      "one wonders if you could ask your bank to disable it?" I've written in my other comment that I did ask. The answer was "it is not possible".
  - vertex-four 9y ago
    In the UK, I've recently had to swipe a card and sign the receipt as the card reader was misbehaving and that's what it wanted me to do. It's a reasonable backup. (I've also had to use a carbon-copy machine to print my card details onto a piece of paper to make a deposit a couple of years ago - now that was ancient tech!)
amenghra 9y ago
Gas pumps are going to be among the last places to use mag stripes because they might not have network connectivity. Pretty much everything else is moving to chip'n pin or tap. I look forward to having banks issue cards without any mag stripe on them.
- jimjimjim 9y ago
  remote truck stops in some countries have been doing gprs transactions for years (maybe not for credit cards but certainly for fuel cards. )
- kbart 9y ago
  "Gas pumps are going to be among the last places to use mag stripes because they might not have network connectivity." Again, that's US-centric thing. Here in Europe, there's >99% cellular coverage (the remaining 1% is usually deep woods and mountains), so it's not a problem. What I don't get is why the rest of the world must still have magstrip and be open to the related risks, when virtually nobody uses it. I've never seen anyone using magstripe over here or see a place accepting it, but I hear about skimmed/cloned cards and emptied banks accounts regularly.
  - amenghra 9y ago
    I don't have an answer to that. If you are really concerned about having your card skimmed, you can take any simple magnet and erase/scramble the data by waving it over the mag tape. You can check that things worked by swiping before and after at some place where they'll let you swipe (or by making/buying a reader).
  - kelnos 9y ago
    > What I don't get is why the rest of the world must still have magstrip and be open to the related risks Because, like it or not, it doesn't make economic sense for the issuers to remove them. The US is still a place where a lot of transactions are done, and despite the last 10-15 years of immigration bullshit, a ton of people still visit the US from abroad. A non-US card issuer isn't going to spend money to get a custom card without a mag stripe in the first place, and also then be at risk of losing customers who do travel to the US. Offering a special mag-stripe-free version of the card for an extra fee likely isn't worth it to them either, especially when they're fine eating the cost of fraud, and don't care that canceling your card is an inconvenience to you.
bentpins 9y ago
Another reason is fallback transactions. I get these a lot with my card, I assume because the contacts aren't in great shape. I don't think any merchants have actually cared enough to check my card for intentional damage to the chip when processing a fallback transaction, but even with the magstrip I get asked for a pin (NZ). https://www.level2kernel.com/blog/index.html%3Fp=136.html https://www.level2kernel.com/blog/index.html%3Fp=136.html
throwaway613834 9y ago
I don't know if this is why, but magnetic seems much faster than chip...
- dx034 9y ago
  Because you don't need any checks. AFAIK, the PIN confirmation via chip takes at least a second. Online transactions take longer to confirm. That's nicely solved with contactless. You get immediate confirmation that the card was accepted but the terminal still confirms online. The feedback comes 3-5 seconds later. That still allows the retailer to stop you if the card was declined but you can already use the time and don't have to wait until you can remove the card.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  In addition to dx034’s answer, you put your card away right after swiping, but it’s still processing. With chip, you can’t remove it until it processes.
grecy 9y ago
As the other replies allude to, the USA is extremely slow to adopt "new" things like chip&pin, and so in many, many places they still use swipe. In so many ways going from Canada to the USA feels like going back in time, and swiping a credit card is always one of them.
- rsync 9y ago
  "As the other replies allude to, the USA is extremely slow to adopt "new" things like chip&pin, and so in many, many places they still use swipe." Well, we're relatively slow. That is to say, after inventing credit cards we now have a lull in innovation and feature adoption.
  - rocky1138 9y ago
    Most of the time, the sentiment of non-US people is "What have you done for me lately?" I catch myself falling into that trap.
  - Orangeair 9y ago
    At least we use credit cards at all. I was surprised to learn recently that buying things in Japan in still a largely cash-based experience. It's lead to some weird consequences, like a ridiculously high number of vending machines per capita (1 for every 23 people).
    - reaperducer 9y ago
      Germany, too. I've only been to 38 countries and in very few has even magstripe transactions been common. (But that may be the fault of the countries I choose to travel in.) But since most internet commenters never go anywhere, they buy into the "US is old and backwards and dumb" cliche that makes them feel superior to everyone else.
      - grecy 9y ago
        > But since most internet commenters never go anywhere, they buy into the "US is old and backwards and dumb" cliche that makes them feel superior to everyone else. Because I am the OP of this comment chain, I feel that is directed at me. For reference, this is me - http://theroadchoseme.com http://theroadchoseme.com I like to think I have been a few places, lived a few lives.
lmilcin 9y ago
I have been developing credit card terminal applications and security systems professionally. Magstripe is historically for fallback mechanism when the chip on the card or the reader in the terminal might be damaged. There is also a class of terminals that may not have the chip reader altogether, for example airlines didn't bother with chip at all for very long time.

by kbart 9y ago

nikcub 9y ago

It's a backup. I've heard from retailers that the failure rate on the chips is much higher than it is for swiping. In Australia you pay for fuel after filling up, and one fuel station owner is dealing with an average of a driver or two a day who is unable to pay for fuel. They don't carry cash, the chip/EMV is failing and they don't have the mag stripe linked to a facility since they're often debit cards. Apparently the failure rate on phone based payments is also high(er). It's one of those issues I wouldn't have considered before speaking to retailers.

dx034 9y ago
That's why I always carry at least two cards. Cards fail, get blocked because of leaked data, bank fraud systems produce a lot of false positives etc.. The problem with a cashless society really is that you assume the tech is reliable. Unfortunately, that's often not the case.
falsedan 9y ago
Those bloody drongos should switch to pre-paid then. The unattended stations are all pre-paid…
jordanthoms 9y ago
Yeah, the chips are nowhere near as reliable as the magstripe. It seems like a transitional technology only - NFC is fast and reliable.
- reaperducer 9y ago
  > NFC is fast and reliable I know you're speaking of NFC chips in cards, but you might know — Does the phone version (Apple Pay/Android Pay/Samsung Pay) still work when my phone's battery is dead?
  - jordanthoms 9y ago
    It won't - one reason why I think NFC-enabled cards will be around for a long time even people only carry one as a backup for their phone. Though theoretically your phone could have a RF-powered NFC chip in it that took over when the phone is off...
chiph 9y ago
When gas hit $4 a gallon in the US (yes that was considered expensive here), many of the stations disabled the "pump then pay" feature because of all the drive-offs they were getting (petrol theft). So you'd have to go inside to get the clerk to enable the pump.
colejohnson66 9y ago
How do you deal with people pumping then just driving off?
- daemin 9y ago
  Cameras, licence plate readers, and Police.

techsupporter 9y ago

From the words in your comment, you don't live in the United States. The reason payment cards the world over still have a mag stripe is because, until a few years ago, chip cards were simply not a thing in the U.S. so the facilities for reading them simply didn't (widely) exist. Therefore, cards from other countries had to have magnetic stripes in order to work in the U.S.[0] Even today, two years after the supposedly "drop dead date" for switching to chip cards, 40% of my transactions are by swiping. 0 - There are other reasons, like some ATMs reading the magstripe to ascertain whether a card has a chip and then prompting the user to leave the card in place. I've only encountered older ATMs that do this but it is another reason. But the most common one is that outside-the-U.S. issuers want their cards to work inside the U.S. if a customer of theirs travels there.

kbart 9y ago
"The reason payment cards the world over still have a mag stripe is because, until a few years ago, chip cards were simply not a thing in the U.S. " So let them have it, why should I care and endure security risk? I've never been to USA nor I'm planning to (at least not unless they fix that gestapo-like border control), but still my every card has a magstripe waiting to get skimmed. If I ever need to go to USA, I'll get a suitable card.
- peteretep 9y ago
  I use a company called Revolut to manage a card of mine. One of the options in the app is to explicitly disabled Magstripe payments, so one wonders if you could ask your bank to disable it?
  - kbart 9y ago
    "one wonders if you could ask your bank to disable it?" I've written in my other comment that I did ask. The answer was "it is not possible".
- vertex-four 9y ago
  In the UK, I've recently had to swipe a card and sign the receipt as the card reader was misbehaving and that's what it wanted me to do. It's a reasonable backup. (I've also had to use a carbon-copy machine to print my card details onto a piece of paper to make a deposit a couple of years ago - now that was ancient tech!)

amenghra 9y ago

Gas pumps are going to be among the last places to use mag stripes because they might not have network connectivity. Pretty much everything else is moving to chip'n pin or tap. I look forward to having banks issue cards without any mag stripe on them.

jimjimjim 9y ago
remote truck stops in some countries have been doing gprs transactions for years (maybe not for credit cards but certainly for fuel cards. )
kbart 9y ago
"Gas pumps are going to be among the last places to use mag stripes because they might not have network connectivity." Again, that's US-centric thing. Here in Europe, there's >99% cellular coverage (the remaining 1% is usually deep woods and mountains), so it's not a problem. What I don't get is why the rest of the world must still have magstrip and be open to the related risks, when virtually nobody uses it. I've never seen anyone using magstripe over here or see a place accepting it, but I hear about skimmed/cloned cards and emptied banks accounts regularly.
- amenghra 9y ago
  I don't have an answer to that. If you are really concerned about having your card skimmed, you can take any simple magnet and erase/scramble the data by waving it over the mag tape. You can check that things worked by swiping before and after at some place where they'll let you swipe (or by making/buying a reader).
- kelnos 9y ago
  > What I don't get is why the rest of the world must still have magstrip and be open to the related risks Because, like it or not, it doesn't make economic sense for the issuers to remove them. The US is still a place where a lot of transactions are done, and despite the last 10-15 years of immigration bullshit, a ton of people still visit the US from abroad. A non-US card issuer isn't going to spend money to get a custom card without a mag stripe in the first place, and also then be at risk of losing customers who do travel to the US. Offering a special mag-stripe-free version of the card for an extra fee likely isn't worth it to them either, especially when they're fine eating the cost of fraud, and don't care that canceling your card is an inconvenience to you.

bentpins 9y ago

Another reason is fallback transactions. I get these a lot with my card, I assume because the contacts aren't in great shape. I don't think any merchants have actually cared enough to check my card for intentional damage to the chip when processing a fallback transaction, but even with the magstrip I get asked for a pin (NZ). https://www.level2kernel.com/blog/index.html%3Fp=136.html https://www.level2kernel.com/blog/index.html%3Fp=136.html

throwaway613834 9y ago

I don't know if this is why, but magnetic seems much faster than chip...

dx034 9y ago
Because you don't need any checks. AFAIK, the PIN confirmation via chip takes at least a second. Online transactions take longer to confirm. That's nicely solved with contactless. You get immediate confirmation that the card was accepted but the terminal still confirms online. The feedback comes 3-5 seconds later. That still allows the retailer to stop you if the card was declined but you can already use the time and don't have to wait until you can remove the card.
colejohnson66 9y ago
In addition to dx034’s answer, you put your card away right after swiping, but it’s still processing. With chip, you can’t remove it until it processes.

grecy 9y ago

As the other replies allude to, the USA is extremely slow to adopt "new" things like chip&pin, and so in many, many places they still use swipe. In so many ways going from Canada to the USA feels like going back in time, and swiping a credit card is always one of them.

rsync 9y ago
"As the other replies allude to, the USA is extremely slow to adopt "new" things like chip&pin, and so in many, many places they still use swipe." Well, we're relatively slow. That is to say, after inventing credit cards we now have a lull in innovation and feature adoption.
- rocky1138 9y ago
  Most of the time, the sentiment of non-US people is "What have you done for me lately?" I catch myself falling into that trap.
- Orangeair 9y ago
  At least we use credit cards at all. I was surprised to learn recently that buying things in Japan in still a largely cash-based experience. It's lead to some weird consequences, like a ridiculously high number of vending machines per capita (1 for every 23 people).
  - reaperducer 9y ago
    Germany, too. I've only been to 38 countries and in very few has even magstripe transactions been common. (But that may be the fault of the countries I choose to travel in.) But since most internet commenters never go anywhere, they buy into the "US is old and backwards and dumb" cliche that makes them feel superior to everyone else.
    - grecy 9y ago
      > But since most internet commenters never go anywhere, they buy into the "US is old and backwards and dumb" cliche that makes them feel superior to everyone else. Because I am the OP of this comment chain, I feel that is directed at me. For reference, this is me - http://theroadchoseme.com http://theroadchoseme.com I like to think I have been a few places, lived a few lives.

lmilcin 9y ago

I have been developing credit card terminal applications and security systems professionally. Magstripe is historically for fallback mechanism when the chip on the card or the reader in the terminal might be damaged. There is also a class of terminals that may not have the chip reader altogether, for example airlines didn't bother with chip at all for very long time.