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Financial fraud prevention gambits are complicated. It may be possible that PP thought someone else was using your account. What should happen in these scenar

Financial fraud prevention gambits are complicated. It may be possible that PP thought someone else was using your account. What should happen in these scenarios is simply a validation of some kind ie payment only goes through if you click on the email your received. I used to travel to SF from Canada a lot and my bank would block my Visa even though I told them not to. In the US there's no password in Visas, i.e. no chip-and-pin, which is totally crazy = huge fraud. It's funny to think in the Silicon Valley, top tech companies in the world ... everyone is still using that old mag stripe stuff when pretty much the rest of the world has moved on.

pbh101 8y ago
The US largely migrated to chip and signature in 2015. I think a large majority of credit card uses today are chip in the US because the issuers quickly sent out chip cards, most terminals got updated to use them, and swipe is rejected often if chip is available. To be clear, this is chip (and sometimes signature for large purchases) but not chip-and-pin, so the original statement of no passwords generally holds true, but the mag stripes are generally not used anymore.
- joering2 8y ago
  Put your chip card quickly in and out three times, next the machine will tell you to “swipe your card”.
  - girvo 8y ago
    This even works in chip-and-pin systems, at least here in Australia. Makes me sad, I don't really understand why falling back to what we're trying to replace is considered a good idea :(
    - eythian 8y ago
      It's temporary. Typical readers where I am in Europe don't even have the magstripe hardware any more.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    It’s easy to accidentally invoke paywave doing this, which is annoying when trying to text if a mag strip is faulty.
- vkou 8y ago
  > swipe is rejected often if chip is available. It's the other way around. If you try the chip 3+ times, and it doesn't work, you can swipe the card, and the swipe transaction will work. When the more secure method fails, it falls back to the less secure one. It's lunacy.
  - Guvante 8y ago
    The retailer either accepts swipes or not, ditto for your bank, the fact that there is a fall back feature if chip fails isn't a security failure unless it opens up a new avenue. (Someone could just print a magic strip unless one or both blocked mag strip charges)
    - pbh101 8y ago
      At some retailers lights will flash around both the swipe slot and the chip slot on the machine when it is time to pay, but I’ve experimented with swiping a chip-enabled card and every time the machine immediately says ‘Insert Chip’. I think retailers still really want to accept swipes to prevent chip reliability issues from resulting in lost sales, but they also want to heavily prefer chip transactions because then they aren’t as liable in fraud cases. So perhaps they’ve bought credit card machines that have conditional-swipe failover for this.
      - Guvante 8y ago
        It is about processing fees IIRC. No way to avoid the fraud liability but you can get a lower cost per transaction by having chip and being certified to take payments through it (including some extra auditing)
  - Karunamon 8y ago
    Given how craptacular the terminals are here, not having the fallback would lead to a nontrivial amount of lost sales. (Sooo.. I can’t pay? Guess I have to abandon this cart of groceries and find a bank branch...) The chips also don’t seem to last as long as the magstripes for some reason (which makes zero sense when you think about it). I’ve had to get my card replaced 3x in the space of two years.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  There are still idiot retailers that won't support the chip for debit transactions. Or even stupider, some let you choose between credit or a debit after inserting to the chip reader and reject you for choosing debit.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Mag strips are often used by ATMs and machines that you stuff cards into for tickets (train, museum etc).m I don’t know why but I’ve never encountered an ATM that uses the chip. I’m an MRI radiographer with expertise in the area of mag strip erasure. Chips are fine though and work after repeated exposure to 3T magnets.
  - pbh101 8y ago
    I’ve inferred that the newer ATMs I’ve encountered use chips: the card stays in the machine for the entire transaction and is released to you right before the cash is dispensed.
    - eythian 8y ago
      I don't think I've ever used an ATM that doesn't do this since I started using them some time in the late 90's, even when the cards had magstripe and the chip was a twinkle in a beach's eye.
      - lostlogin 8y ago
        Pbh101 and eythian - where in the world are you? I’m in New Zealand usually and France currently and I’ll pay attention in the U.K. next week. I’d love the strip to be redundant.
        eythian 8y ago
        From NZ, now in NL. In both places, the card is virtually always ingested into the machine, and only released as the second-last step (before you get the cash.)

pbh101 8y ago

The US largely migrated to chip and signature in 2015. I think a large majority of credit card uses today are chip in the US because the issuers quickly sent out chip cards, most terminals got updated to use them, and swipe is rejected often if chip is available. To be clear, this is chip (and sometimes signature for large purchases) but not chip-and-pin, so the original statement of no passwords generally holds true, but the mag stripes are generally not used anymore.

joering2 8y ago
Put your chip card quickly in and out three times, next the machine will tell you to “swipe your card”.
- girvo 8y ago
  This even works in chip-and-pin systems, at least here in Australia. Makes me sad, I don't really understand why falling back to what we're trying to replace is considered a good idea :(
  - eythian 8y ago
    It's temporary. Typical readers where I am in Europe don't even have the magstripe hardware any more.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  It’s easy to accidentally invoke paywave doing this, which is annoying when trying to text if a mag strip is faulty.
vkou 8y ago
> swipe is rejected often if chip is available. It's the other way around. If you try the chip 3+ times, and it doesn't work, you can swipe the card, and the swipe transaction will work. When the more secure method fails, it falls back to the less secure one. It's lunacy.
- Guvante 8y ago
  The retailer either accepts swipes or not, ditto for your bank, the fact that there is a fall back feature if chip fails isn't a security failure unless it opens up a new avenue. (Someone could just print a magic strip unless one or both blocked mag strip charges)
  - pbh101 8y ago
    At some retailers lights will flash around both the swipe slot and the chip slot on the machine when it is time to pay, but I’ve experimented with swiping a chip-enabled card and every time the machine immediately says ‘Insert Chip’. I think retailers still really want to accept swipes to prevent chip reliability issues from resulting in lost sales, but they also want to heavily prefer chip transactions because then they aren’t as liable in fraud cases. So perhaps they’ve bought credit card machines that have conditional-swipe failover for this.
    - Guvante 8y ago
      It is about processing fees IIRC. No way to avoid the fraud liability but you can get a lower cost per transaction by having chip and being certified to take payments through it (including some extra auditing)
- Karunamon 8y ago
  Given how craptacular the terminals are here, not having the fallback would lead to a nontrivial amount of lost sales. (Sooo.. I can’t pay? Guess I have to abandon this cart of groceries and find a bank branch...) The chips also don’t seem to last as long as the magstripes for some reason (which makes zero sense when you think about it). I’ve had to get my card replaced 3x in the space of two years.
kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
There are still idiot retailers that won't support the chip for debit transactions. Or even stupider, some let you choose between credit or a debit after inserting to the chip reader and reject you for choosing debit.
lostlogin 8y ago
Mag strips are often used by ATMs and machines that you stuff cards into for tickets (train, museum etc).m I don’t know why but I’ve never encountered an ATM that uses the chip. I’m an MRI radiographer with expertise in the area of mag strip erasure. Chips are fine though and work after repeated exposure to 3T magnets.
- pbh101 8y ago
  I’ve inferred that the newer ATMs I’ve encountered use chips: the card stays in the machine for the entire transaction and is released to you right before the cash is dispensed.
  - eythian 8y ago
    I don't think I've ever used an ATM that doesn't do this since I started using them some time in the late 90's, even when the cards had magstripe and the chip was a twinkle in a beach's eye.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      Pbh101 and eythian - where in the world are you? I’m in New Zealand usually and France currently and I’ll pay attention in the U.K. next week. I’d love the strip to be redundant.
      - eythian 8y ago
        From NZ, now in NL. In both places, the card is virtually always ingested into the machine, and only released as the second-last step (before you get the cash.)