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Pinpads and terminals have to be re-injected with debit keys for the appropriate bank and reconfigured with the correct software load & merchant account before

Pinpads and terminals have to be re-injected with debit keys for the appropriate bank and reconfigured with the correct software load & merchant account before you can use hardware that was used by another merchant. If you don't do that, the other merchant is very likely to receive the funds you charge your clients cards for, short of their merchant account being closed. The reason EMV isn't enabled at most merchants is its both more expensive than standard swipe transactions, and massively slower unless your Costco & Kroger (who both just got quick chip). 30 seconds of waiting for a card to process, combined with EMV chip read errors due to partial insertion or failing/oxidized contacts (especially common on pinpads that aren't mounted to the table, most often the Pax S300 cause those customers are cheap AF) is a recipe for long lines. Grocers are leading the EMV transition as they are the most powerful block of merchants when it comes to beating down interchange rates and processing fees, with Walmart repeatedly suing Mastercard, and other large retailers doing the same to the other card vendors. For that small segment, they've been able to beat down Visa & Mastercard on the per kilobyte data transmission fee and on the other BS fees that make processing EMV cards more expensive than magstripe.

ACow_Adonis 8y ago
An honest question: why would the cost of chip processing be prohibitive and the speed of chip processing be 30 seconds of waiting in the US, when its essentially rolled out en-mass in AUS and neither of those things (appear) to applicable, or at the very least they haven't stopped mass adoption? It certainly doesn't take 30 seconds of waiting to tap and pay here...
- lb1lf 8y ago
  Same goes for Norway; swiping is just a fallback measure if the chip is unreadable; you then have to sign at the register and your signature is supposed to be compared to the one on your card. Transaction (be it chip or swipe) is approved in a couple of seconds. The last couple of years, we've had cards fitted with NFC, too - so if the terminal is compatible, no need to type the PIN code, either - just put the card next to the terminal, done. (This only works for smaller charges - less than $65-ish, methinks - and every now and then you're asked to type your PIN anyway.)
  - Accacin 8y ago
    Here in the UK too we have the NFC thing and we call it 'contactless'. It works well, but the limit is £30 at the moment, although that's slowly increasing by about £5 per year. It's really popular now, all my cards and even my credit card come with it, so some people aren't happy about that naturally, although personally I've never had any problems.
    - hvidgaard 8y ago
      Contactless is a really convenient technilogy. I use it all the time, to the point where I actively have to think about what my PIN is when it inevitably asks for it.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Probably because most US transactions are still done offline, so when an online EMV transaction is attempted the terminal has to bring up its network interface, obtain an IP, etc. Here in the UK pretty much all terminals are always online and so EMV transactions only take a couple of seconds to authorise.
  - gergles 8y ago
    Reverse that. The US has always had online terminals because we didn't get EMV initially. Taking impressions and filling out charge slips was 'online' (call the auth center,) swipe transactions were online, and then we just do EMV online too since every credit card terminal in the country was already online. In Europe where EMV was first introduced, offline transaction processing was extremely common because there had been no reason to put terminals online prior to the EMV rollout and merchants did what merchants do and whined about the cost of acquiring telecom, so offline mode was required in Europe. I have literally never seen a fully offline transaction in the US (in fact, very few US cards even ship the certs necessary to conduct offline transactions), but several of them in Europe and the UK as recently as last year.
adrr 8y ago
Auth doesn't move cash so it doesn't matter what merchant account is in there as long as its valid. Only settlement does.
raverbashing 8y ago
I've had a chip with oxidation issues once after years of using the same card. Funnily, the best way I found of dealing with it was just wiping the cooper with the (leather) wallet itself. Seems like it's abrasive enough to take out the oxide layer without major issues (and it does not accumulate static) As for payment speed, it usually doesn't take 30s but now most payments are done with contactless, which is even faster.
danaris 8y ago
A large percentage (possibly a majority at this point; seems to be fairly close on either side of the 50% mark) of places around here, small and large, now support chip, and rural Upstate NY is not exactly the heart of things. While I noticed some chip readers seemed slower than magstripe in the initial wave of rollouts, that no longer appears to be true. I've certainly never seen one take 30 seconds to process; that just sounds absurd. 3-8 seconds seems to be closer to the norm. Of course, gas stations still haven't adopted them. I've even seen gas stations that have updated their machines with new hardware since the chip machines started to appear, that are clearly still magswipe. The most bizarre thing I've seen so far in terms of the transition to chip machines is at Wegman's, where the regular cashiers' machines will let you use the chip—but the ones at the café, despite being chip-capable machines, have various stickers on them and an insert in the chip slot saying "SWIPE ONLY". Gotta wonder what piece of rigamarole prevents them using chips there.
gergles 8y ago
Costs are exactly the same for EMV or non-EMV (swiped) processing. If your acquirer is doing something different, you need to dump them, because it's so far out of industry standard I'd literally be speechless. The only speedup from Quick Chip is not running issuer scripts. The actual auth process doesn't take much (if any) amount longer than with a swiped transaction. Quick Chip feels significantly faster because you can insert and remove at any time during the transaction, but it doesn't actually do much to speed up the transaction processing. It just makes you feel like the transaction is faster because you aren't sitting there at the end waiting for the terminal.

ACow_Adonis 8y ago

An honest question: why would the cost of chip processing be prohibitive and the speed of chip processing be 30 seconds of waiting in the US, when its essentially rolled out en-mass in AUS and neither of those things (appear) to applicable, or at the very least they haven't stopped mass adoption? It certainly doesn't take 30 seconds of waiting to tap and pay here...

lb1lf 8y ago
Same goes for Norway; swiping is just a fallback measure if the chip is unreadable; you then have to sign at the register and your signature is supposed to be compared to the one on your card. Transaction (be it chip or swipe) is approved in a couple of seconds. The last couple of years, we've had cards fitted with NFC, too - so if the terminal is compatible, no need to type the PIN code, either - just put the card next to the terminal, done. (This only works for smaller charges - less than $65-ish, methinks - and every now and then you're asked to type your PIN anyway.)
- Accacin 8y ago
  Here in the UK too we have the NFC thing and we call it 'contactless'. It works well, but the limit is £30 at the moment, although that's slowly increasing by about £5 per year. It's really popular now, all my cards and even my credit card come with it, so some people aren't happy about that naturally, although personally I've never had any problems.
  - hvidgaard 8y ago
    Contactless is a really convenient technilogy. I use it all the time, to the point where I actively have to think about what my PIN is when it inevitably asks for it.
Rjevski 8y ago
Probably because most US transactions are still done offline, so when an online EMV transaction is attempted the terminal has to bring up its network interface, obtain an IP, etc. Here in the UK pretty much all terminals are always online and so EMV transactions only take a couple of seconds to authorise.
- gergles 8y ago
  Reverse that. The US has always had online terminals because we didn't get EMV initially. Taking impressions and filling out charge slips was 'online' (call the auth center,) swipe transactions were online, and then we just do EMV online too since every credit card terminal in the country was already online. In Europe where EMV was first introduced, offline transaction processing was extremely common because there had been no reason to put terminals online prior to the EMV rollout and merchants did what merchants do and whined about the cost of acquiring telecom, so offline mode was required in Europe. I have literally never seen a fully offline transaction in the US (in fact, very few US cards even ship the certs necessary to conduct offline transactions), but several of them in Europe and the UK as recently as last year.

adrr 8y ago

Auth doesn't move cash so it doesn't matter what merchant account is in there as long as its valid. Only settlement does.

raverbashing 8y ago

I've had a chip with oxidation issues once after years of using the same card. Funnily, the best way I found of dealing with it was just wiping the cooper with the (leather) wallet itself. Seems like it's abrasive enough to take out the oxide layer without major issues (and it does not accumulate static) As for payment speed, it usually doesn't take 30s but now most payments are done with contactless, which is even faster.

danaris 8y ago

A large percentage (possibly a majority at this point; seems to be fairly close on either side of the 50% mark) of places around here, small and large, now support chip, and rural Upstate NY is not exactly the heart of things. While I noticed some chip readers seemed slower than magstripe in the initial wave of rollouts, that no longer appears to be true. I've certainly never seen one take 30 seconds to process; that just sounds absurd. 3-8 seconds seems to be closer to the norm. Of course, gas stations still haven't adopted them. I've even seen gas stations that have updated their machines with new hardware since the chip machines started to appear, that are clearly still magswipe. The most bizarre thing I've seen so far in terms of the transition to chip machines is at Wegman's, where the regular cashiers' machines will let you use the chip—but the ones at the café, despite being chip-capable machines, have various stickers on them and an insert in the chip slot saying "SWIPE ONLY". Gotta wonder what piece of rigamarole prevents them using chips there.

gergles 8y ago

Costs are exactly the same for EMV or non-EMV (swiped) processing. If your acquirer is doing something different, you need to dump them, because it's so far out of industry standard I'd literally be speechless. The only speedup from Quick Chip is not running issuer scripts. The actual auth process doesn't take much (if any) amount longer than with a swiped transaction. Quick Chip feels significantly faster because you can insert and remove at any time during the transaction, but it doesn't actually do much to speed up the transaction processing. It just makes you feel like the transaction is faster because you aren't sitting there at the end waiting for the terminal.